Many studies have reported that each facial expression stimulus affected differently visual attention in the various properties. In temporal properties, primed fearful faces facilitate second target (T2) detection in attentional blink. On the other hand, primed disgusted faces reduce T2 detection. However, the different effects of the inserted facial expression stimuli have not examined yet between fearful and disgusted faces. The present study compared the T2 (neutral face) identification performance when fearful, disgusted, and neutral faces were presented as first target (T1). The results indicated that T2 accuracy was higher when T1 was disgusted face than other faces in lag-1. On the other hand, T2 accuracy was higher when T1 was fearful face than other faces in lag-6 and lag-10. Thus, the effects of facial expression in visual attention differ temporally between fearful and disgusted faces.

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In multimedia learning, in which information is presented with words and pictures, insertion of cues that guide learners’ attention to relevant information is considered as an effective technique to enhance learning (Mayer, 2014). The present study examined the effects of an attention-guiding cue (i.e., color-coding) and learner’s working memory capacity (WMC) on learning outcomes. Participants were divided into one of the WMC groups (high, low) based on the Automated Operation Span task, and randomly assigned to one of the ‘cueing’ conditions (color, no-color) for the learning session, during which they viewed an instructional video consisting of narration and illustrations. Results of the post-learning comprehension test showed an advantage of high-WMC learners over low-WMC learners. This suggests that high-WMC individuals have a greater ability to allocate attention to task-relevant information efficiently (Engle, 2002) in the presence or absence of attention-guiding cues.

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The purpose of this study was to examine the factors of movement image fomation. The task was "Transfomation Origami". Young children transformation origami". They moved the origami of the sample according to a trace. These obsevation example suggested that the basic factor was experience movement and representation ability of mantal movemental image.

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People with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are reported to have irregularities for crossmodal perception. Crossmodal correspondences are specific relationships among arbitrary crossmodal sensations (e.g., a brighter stimulus and a louder sound). Crossmodal correspondences are considered to be established by associative learning, but learning cues are assumed to be different among the types of correspondences. This study investigated the relationships between the crossmodal correspondences and the ASD traits. People with lower ASD trait value showed the dominant correspondence effect for the brightness-loudness and visual location-pitch pairs, whose correspondence cue is assumed as neural/perceptual and conceptual/linguistic similarities, respectively. For the visual size-pitch pair which is assumed to be acquired by statistical learning, the stronger ASD trait for detailed attention was related to stronger magnitude of the correspondence. These results suggest the unique relationships between the ASD traits and the crossmodal correspondences or the manner of sensory associative learning.

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The people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) show various tendencies like difficulty in social interactions and restricted interests and behavior, and atypical audiovisual interaction. Non-diagnosed people are also reported having variable ASD traits. However, it has been not fully investigated the particular relationships between ASD traits and audiovisual interaction. We estimated the degree of ASD traits for non-diagnosed people, and the audiovisual interaction pattern under the stream bounce perception (i.e., a sound enhances bouncing perception when two moving objects overlap). The people with the higher comprehensive ASD traits showed the stronger audiovisual interaction effect. Additionally, the people with the higher ASD traits for the difficulty in social interactions showed the effect even when the sound was presented after the overlap of the visual stimuli. The comprehensive ASD traits and the traits related to social difficulty would have unique effects on the audiovisual interaction under the stream bounce perception.

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Recent studies reported values of power spectrums inside the spatial frequency regarding images of handwritten characters. However, no psychological experiments have investigated the spatial frequency band needed for perceiving characters’ pictorial features. This study investigated the width of the spatial frequency band used for distinguishing features of writer or font style from handwritten characters’ pictorial features. With stimuli for low and high spatial frequencies, participants (N = 9) were asked to discriminate, for each picture, the writer or font style and then name it. We measured thresholds by applying the method of limits. Results suggested that, in the pictorial features of handwritten characters, features of writers’ strokes are expressed by a wider spatial frequency band than features of font style. Our findings indicate that writers’ individuality could be expressed in various methods, and thus handwritten characters’ nonverbal features might help one execute more various design presentations.

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Hashimoto (2016) found that impression formation is changed by fine changes in mean utterance pitch. However, Hashimoto (2016) did not investigate the effect of fine changes in utterance speed and listener's sex. The present study examined the influence of fine changes in utterance speed and listener's sex on impression formation. Participants were 21 undergraduate and graduate students (11 females, 10 males). The voice stimuli were made by first having one male and one female speaker read a first-time self-introduction, and then manipulating the utterance speed in 19 steps, with an 8% change between each step. Results indicated that the faster the utterance speed was, the higher the perceived utterance pitch was. Also, female listeners judged the speaker's age to be higher than male listeners. These results suggest that utterance speed and listener's sex are related to physical characteristics of a voice or impressions of a speaker's attributes.

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Bodily self-recognition involves integration of synchronous visuo-motor information. Recently, functional body model hypothesis, with the potential to explain the alteration of bodily self-recognition from the viewpoint of bodily functionality, has been proposed. However, it is still an assumption without experimental evidence. Here, we investigated whether the bodily functionality modulates the alteration of bodily self-recognition using a rubber hand illusion paradigm. We compared the alteration of bodily self-recognition based on simple visuo-motor integration with a rubber hand (neutral condition) to that based on the functionality provided by visuo-motor integration through a key-pressing task with the rubber hand (functionality condition). We measured the proprioceptive drift, the mislocalization of own perceived hand position toward the dummy hand, as an objective index of illusory bodily self-recognition on the dummy hand. The proprioceptive drift was greater in the functionality condition compared to that in the neutral condition. This result suggests that functionality influences bodily self-recognition.

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Depression and anxiety disorders are likely to occur during adolescence and have huge impact for them, but there are a few studies about the effects of depression and anxiety disorder on the cognitive ability of adolescents. In this study, the effects of depression and anxiety disorder on the cognitive ability of adolescents was investigated through various behavioral tasks. 56 male high school students performed Emotional Perception Task, and etc. In correlational analysis, response time of the Emotional Perception Task had significant correlation with BDI and BAI, and there is no significant correlation with other tests such as Tower of London Task. This indicates that the depression and anxiety of disorders has an influence on adolescents about emotional perception or visual acuity but not higher cognitive abilities.

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People must switch thoughts and actions accordingly from day to day in order to carry out their respective goals. Decentering which can objectively grasp the experience as a factor to prevent and alleviate the difficulty of switching by ruminant can be considered. In the previous study, examined the relationship between each variable by cross-sectional study, but there are not many places where it affects occurrence, maintenance. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to examine the state of change of rumination, decentering, switching from the longitudinal data of the secondary point and clarify the relationship of each variable. As a result of the analysis, we found that the depression increase group had originally low switching scores. Switching can be done if the rumination falls, and switching can not be done if the rumination increases. On the other hand, it turned out that switching can be done when decentering increases.

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This study was designed to compare the executive functions of psychiatric patients with those of normal people by the Executive Functions Questionnaire (EFQ). We conducted the EFQ to psychiatric (schizophrenia, depression, type two bipolar disorder, schizoaffective psychosis, generalized anxiety disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder) patients. Comparison of the schizophrenic patients (N=13), depressive patients (N=15) and normal people (N=71, Sekiguchi & Yamada, 2017) matched by the age (23-68) revealed as follows. 1) The psychiatric patients showed lower executive functions (shifting, efficacy, planning, and sustaining-attention) than those of normal people. 2) The schizophrenic patients showed lower absorption. 3) The depressive patients showed higher self-consciousness. It was suggested that executive functions of psychiatric patients are different from those of normal people.

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The word length effect refers to the phenomenon of increasing reaction times as word length increases. However, some studies of Korean word recognition employing the lexical decision task have reported an opposite effect of mono-syllabic words being slower to recognize than bi-syllabic words. To further investigate the so-called mono-syllabic word inferiority effect, the present study conducted an experiment that provides additional evidence that mono-syllabic words are responded to more slowly than bi-syllabic words with the effect being stronger for high-frequency words. In contrast to the ideal length hypothesis advanced by New, Ferrand, Pallier, and Brysbaert (2006), this study proposes an alternative hypothesis involving morphological activation and competition processes.

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Lexical decision times to visually presented homophones are generally longer than those to nonhomophones, known as homophone effects. Mizuno and Matsui (2016) found homophone effects even for auditorily presented homophones, but it was unclear whether activation of visual information of their mates or activation of semantic information produced the effects. In this study, therefore, the lexical decision times to target nonhomophones were measured, with auditorily presented prime words in the following three sharing conditions of the first characters: sharing orthographic and phonological information (OP), only phonological information (P), and no information (NON) with the target words’ first characters. Mean lexical decision time in the OP condition was longer than that in the P condition, and in the P condition, lexical decision time was longer than in the NON condition. These results suggest that the phonological information of auditorily presented words activates their orthographic information.

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Recent studies showed that several semantic aspects involved each other in concept processing. According to the theory of language and situated simulation (LASS; Barsalou et al., 2008), at the beginning of the process, the linguistic or language system is accessed. Then the taxonomic aspect is engaged and followed by the simulation system. In this study, I investigated whether such processing stages can be assumed, regardless of the type of presented word, by using an association task. Participants' responses reflecting the processing steps assumed by the LASS theory were observed when presenting preceded words that are primarily associated with the linguistic or situated aspect. Notably, when the words that are likely to be associated with the taxonomic aspects were presented, different processing strategies might have been used. These results suggested that the processing stages might be different depending on the dominant semantic feature of presented word.

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