A longitudinal case study investigated if Korean learners of English who passed their critical periods for L2 learning could successfully acquire grammatical knowledge implicitly through a repetitive study-test sequence. During the training session, four subjects were exposed to grammatical sentences embedded with target grammars. They read the sentences by self-paced reading, and took immediate grammaticality judgement task without any explicit feedbacks. After four consecutive days of training, they took delayed tests to examine their three types of knowledges: explicit knowledge, implicit knowledge, and lexical processing knowledge. The result showed that mere exposure to grammatical sentences without any explicit explanation, learners could acquire L2 grammar knowledge, and the knowledge had survived even after a month since the experiment finished.

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Previous studies on anchoring effect have shown that knowledge activated by an anchor plays an important role. If this is true, a number will not be necessarily presented as an anchor and stimuli which active different knowledge will suffice to produce anchoring effect. In the present study, we examined whether stimuli that would activate different knowledge would work as “anchor.” We found that presented number as an anchor affected numerical estimation more than stimuli that would be assumed to activate different knowledge. These results suggested that the presented specific number as an anchor played an important role in producing anchoring effects.

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[in Japanese]

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This study aimed to investigate how extra-linguistic information affect online utterance comprehension using the Korean honorific system. Even in a single utterance processing, a listener expects a certain form of honorifics following a term of address based on its social status information. When deviation from the expected usage of honorific form is detected, the violation would elicit an N400 effect. However, in our results the N400 disappearred when the listener could infer a close social distance between the communicators from a term of address. Our findings suggested that the listener builds up expectance toward the upcoming honorific form based on the perceived social information reflected on the term of address.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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It has been reported that false physiological feedback (FPFB), such as an increased or decreased heart rate (HR), modulates the attractiveness of images and the emotional intensity of facial stimuli. It is not clear, however, whether false physiological feedback impacts on valence or arousal. In this study, we addressed this issue by presenting auditory FPFB to participants while they were performing emotional ratings of facial stimuli. Twenty-two healthy undergraduate students participated in this study. While they were presented with true HR feedback or false feedback of increased or decreased HR, they rated their valence and arousal on the facial stimuli using the Affect Grid (Russell et al., 1989), by which valence and arousal ratings can be simultaneously obtained. We found that FPFB decreases arousal ratings as compared with true feedback. On the other hand, valence ratings were not influenced by FPFB. These results suggested that FPFB influences arousal.

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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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[in Japanese]

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The present study investigated whether continuous presentation of the same background photograph produces context-dependent recognition. Nakajima, Isarida, & Isarida (2016) investigated video-context-dependent recognition in Context load (the number of items presented per context) 1, 6, and 18. Continuous presentation of the same video produced context-dependent recognition discrimination in Context load 6 but not in Context load 18. Shortening the study time to one third produced context-dependent recognition discrimination even in Context load 18 (Kubota, Nakajima, Isarida & Isarida, 2016). The present study replicated the above experiments by using background photograph context instead of video video context in Context load 1 and 6. Context load 1 showed context-dependent recognition discrimination but not in Context load 6. Additionally, shortening the study time to one third did not produce context-dependent recognition discrimination. The present results imply that continuous presentation of the same background photograph will disable the photograph from functioning as context.

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Testing the information produce longer term retention than repeated studying, and the influence on the retention differs depending on the combination of studying and testing (Karpicke & Roediger, 2007). The present research investigated the influence of the study/test schedules on the long-term retention taking into consideration that studying performed as feedback after testing. In studying/Testing phase, Participants worked on different study/test schedules that Participants study and test twice, but the order is different. Following study/test phase, Participants took a final free recall test. Results indicated that when in the studying/testing phase, the schedule of alternating studying and testing(STST) produced the best performance of all, but this difference didn’t occur in the final test. Results also suggested that testing during the learning may determine whether or not testing promote long-term retention depending on the initial testing performance.

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Attempting to retrieve information from memory enhances subsequent learning even if the retrieval is failed. This is called failed retrieval. Although the mechanism of this hasn’t been clarified, but some studies suggest that the activation of related information during retrieval enhances the subsequent learning. And the studies which used word pairs suggest that failed retrieval attempts are valuable only if the correct answer is presented immediately after retrieval attempt. One explanation of this result is that the amount of information to be activated is small. In this study we investigated whether the increase of the amount of retrieved information and delay between retrieval and target presentation influenced later recall. The results showed that the amount of information didn’t facilitate later recall and there’s no interaction between the amount of information and delay. These results suggest that failed retrieval may not be due to semantic activation at the time of retrieval.

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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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Recognizing meanings in various things or events is one of the central abilities in human higher cognitive functions. We examined whether the ability to access meanings of Japanese two-Kanji words can be improved by enhancing neural activity in the left anterior temporal lobe (ATL) in volunteers, using anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). The results showed enhanced accuracy of processing synonymous word pairs while the participant was receiving the stimulation. This effect was especially significant for high difficulty items, defined by our pilot data. The current finding demonstrates the causal relationship between ATL and semantic cognition and suggests possible application of tDCS in clinical practise to alleviate semantic impairments caused by neurological disorders.

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