In the wake of global pandemic, interacting with others while wearing masks is emerging as a challenge worldwide. A growing body of literature has reported that face masks hinder emotion recognition in Western samples. Given that diagnostic facial features for recognizing specific emotions (e.g., happiness) differ between Western and Eastern cultures, there would be cultural differences in the effect of face masks on emotion recognition. Relying on the cultural/dialect learning theory in emotion recognition, we conducted a preregistered study where 203 American and 209 Japanese participants judged the emotional expressions of faces (happy, angry, fearful, sad, disgust, and neutral) with/without masks. The results showed cultural differences in the emotion recognition of faces with and without masks. Specifically, face masks hindered happy emotion recognition more in Americans than in Japanese. The results suggest that the effect of wearing masks on emotion recognition depends on the types of emotions and culture.

View full abstract

Emotional faces are detected faster and more accurately than neutral faces. We estimated its cognitive process by analyzing reaction times and accuracy obtained in detecting a target face with emotional expressions or a face with those anti-expressions, which are usually categorized as emotionally neutral, within a crowd of normal neutral faces with the diffusion model. Results showed that the drift rate, which reflects the speed of information accumulation, and the threshold separation, which are related to information amount to be considered, were greater for emotional faces than faces with anti-expressions. They also indicated that the non-decisional time associated with attentional allocation before information accumulation processing was shorter for faces with emotional expressions than those with anti-expressions. These results suggest that rapid and accurate detection of emotional facial expressions is implemented by the cognitive processing with accelerated and adequate information accumulation that is promoted by enhanced attentional allocation.

View full abstract

People often make judgments within a very short time, such as about one second. These judgments are sometimes correct, but sometimes incorrect. How are the cognitive processes that underlie in these judgments? Our study investigated this issue based on mouse trajectories. In a behavioral experiment, participants were presented grid stimuli colored in black and white, and were asked to answer whether the black grids were more than half of the whole grids. Our analyses based on mouse trajectories showed that, about one second after a stimulus was presented, mouse movements often reached maximum velocity and that participants made many incorrect judgments. It is suggested that people are likely to incorrect judgments without cognitive conflict in the first one second.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

Since real-world phenomena often involve uncertainty, people use verbal probability expressions to communicate these phenomena and make decisions based on them. Previous studies have shown that not only the numerical information conveyed by verbal expressions (e.g., "slight chance" conveys a low probability, while "almost certain" conveys a high probability), but also the nuances (e.g., positive expressions such as "slight chance" or negative expressions such as "little chance") affect our decision-making. In the present study, we compared the performance of decision making based on verbal probability expressions between people with autistic traits and those from general population. Results showed that people with autistic traits are 1) strongly affected by verbal nuances and 2) less affected by numerical information conveyed by expressions, indicating that they understand uncertainty and make decisions differently from people from general population. This indicates that people with autistic traits understand uncertainty and make decisions with characteristic way.

View full abstract

Previous studies are inconsistent on whether or not background music (BGM) affects task engagement, and what kind of BGM is better. One reason for this is the complex and diverse factors associated with BGM, such as tempo and emotional valence. We focused on the self-choice of BGM as a simpler factor and examined its effect. We compared sustained attention to response task engagement in three BGM conditions during the task: self-choice, randomly chosen, and no BGM. Participants created the BGMs in advance, using AI composition tools. We analyzed data from 65 university students. The results showed no difference in task performance. However, subjective concentration was higher in the no BGM condition than in the other conditions. Further, enjoyment was higher in the order of self-choice, randomly chosen, and no BGM conditions. By self-choice of BGM, participants enjoyed the task and maintained their performance, with low awareness of concentration.

View full abstract

Previously, we found that positive emotions explain beauty of haiku (Hitsuwari & Nomura, 2021), and that cognitive ambiguity reduces aesthetic evaluations of haiku (Hitsuwari & Nomura, in revision). Considering the importance of negative emotions (Menninghaus et al., 2017) and cognitive ambiguity (Muth et al., 2015) in art, the next step should be a more careful examination of the relationship between emotional and cognitive change that occur during haiku appreciation. In this study, we examined the effects of emotional and cognitive changes on the aesthetic evaluation of haiku by evaluating each part of haiku step by step and tracking the continuous emotional response using a joystick. As a result of a laboratory experiment with 113 students, we found that an increase in positive emotions and the resolution of emotional and cognitive ambiguity explain the beauty of haiku, indicating the importance of the process of emotional and cognitive change in haiku appreciation.

View full abstract

This study sought to determine heterogeneous developmental trajectories of creativity during early adolescence and to identify parental attitudes explaining the differences between such developmental trajectory groups. Data at the first wave were collected from Japanese middle school students in seventh grade (N = 392). Creativity was measured by the Torrance Tests of Creativity Thinking-Verbal across three waves with six-month intervals. Parental attitudes (autonomy support and psychological control) were measured only at the first wave. Results from a group-based trajectory modelling and model comparisons revealed that creativity developmental trajectories were classified into three groups: low, moderate, and high. Multinomial regression analyses also showed that higher autonomy support and lower psychological control distinguished between the low and moderate groups. Our finding was first to show that the developmental trajectory of verbal creativity during early adolescence is not uniform and that positive parental attitudes partly contribute to the development trajectory of creativity.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

Sense of body ownership and sense of agency are sensorimotor root of bodily self-consciousness. However, dynamics of their construction still remains unclear. Here, we immersed sixty participants into the VR environment and had them manipulate the avatar’s hand motions through the haptic device. Inserted visuomotor rotation disrupted the subjective score of body ownership and agency over the avatar but they recovered along with sensorimotor adaptation. To examine why their temporal profile of recovery were different, we dissociated the internal motor memories into the two components: fast memory and slow memory. We found that the recovery of body ownership was driven by fast memory and the recovery of agency was driven mainly by slow memory. Our results indicate that multiple motor memories underpin the basis of bodily self-consciousness and their difference of temporal dynamics originates from such motor memories with distinct time courses.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

Recently, EEG microstates (EEGms), which are the spatial representations of the whole brain state at a moment have been focused. Although many studies have examined the function of EEGms, it is still mixed what function each pattern has. In this study, we examined EEGms related to the sensory and cognitive process during oddball tasks and tried to organize the relationship between EEGms and conventional views such as ERP. Twenty participants' EEGs were averaged across trials and participants, and EEGms analysis revealed the task positive-negative EEGms (class C, D) predominated at specific latencies during the task. Moreover, it was suggested the topography between tasks with different stimulus modalities significantly differed. Since ERP and EEGms are complementary in that ERP deal with time-series data in the temporal direction and EEGms deal with the whole information at a certain moment in the electrode direction, it may be useful to use both indices together.

View full abstract

We feel unusual grotesqueness and distortion when seeing several faces rapidly presented in peripheral vision (FFDE). Here, to reveal the effect of facial parts, we investigate the intensity of FFDE using partially presented faces. In the experiment, a series of face pictures were presented for 10 seconds while switching pictures every 250 ms. We presented 5 conditions: whole-face, upper-half, eye-alone, eye-removed, and contourless-face. Participants were asked to keep pressing a button when they felt distortion of faces and to rate the intensity of distortion and uncanniness after stimulus presentation. We found that the intensity of FFDE depended on the presented facial parts: whole-face > contourless-face > upper-half > eye-removed > eye-alone. The FFDE latency also differed by condition, though it diverged from the order of intensity rating. These results suggest that holistic face processing is involved in FFDE and that there are different determinants of intensity and latency of FFDE.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

The concealed information test (CIT) is an information detection method that estimates the presence or absence of memory by presenting multiple question items and comparing the responses to specific items with those to other items. On the other hand, conventional reaction time-based CIT (RT-CIT) tasks require targets in the same category as the question items, but this condition is a practical limitation. Here, we applied the spatial cueing task to create an RT-CIT method that can be implemented even when both question items and a target item are in different categories. The results of experiments manipulating the SOA between the preceding cue and the appearance of the target suggest that visual processing of the target differs depending on whether the preceding question item is concealed information or not.

View full abstract

We investigated whether the flashing LEDs occurring near participants can interfere with the detection task presented in far front of them. Participants (n = 20) were asked to detect the brake lights displayed on the forward monitor. LEDs were placed in the left- and right-side vicinity of the participants. We manipulated the spatial congruency (congruent, incongruent) and SOA (50, 150, 350, 550 ms) between the LED and brake lights. Results showed the significant main effect of SOA, indicating that the detection of brake lights was delayed immediately after the LED onsets. We further found that RTs of congruent trials was larger than those of incongruent trials at SOA = 550 ms condition, showing that spatial attention was captured by LED lights. These results suggest that spatially task-irrelevant presentation of LED flashes simulating in-vehicle technology may capture attention and interfere with the detection of changes in the road environment ahead.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

In recent years, it is widely accepted that cognitive aging is mainly caused by the decline of cognitive control functions. In order to show the relationship between cognitive aging and an everyday dual-task situation, listening something at work, we executed an experiment with a visuo-spatial cognitive task, the N-back task of 3x3 matrix. Participants were asked to respond to a target letter or letter position. Results showed that, in the task targeting the letter position, the response time under the control condition was slower than other three conditions with noise-canceling headphone (headphone only, music presentation, and soundscape presentation conditions), and the effect was larger in younger adults. The effects of noise cancelling on cognitive control, particularly on visuo-spatial tasks, and those relation with ageing will be discussed.

View full abstract

Few research has focused on product search process in shopping behavior, and in particular, its relations to cognitive aging have not been examined yet. In this study, we conducted an experimental task of searching for multiple products one by one in an actual supermarket store with older and younger adults. This presentation reports the in-store map drawing task that was conducted after the searching tasks. A quantitative analysis using the Gardony Map Drawing Analyzer (Gardony et al., 2016) and a qualitative analysis of map features were applied. Results showed that although there were some differences in the accuracy of the map drawing between two age groups, both the older and younger adults exhibited high performance in drawing a map. In addition, only younger adults included the drawing of shelves, which sometimes appeared with categorical labels. The relationship between these results and the processes in product search task will be discussed.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

In recent years, usage of remote conversation has increased, and difficulties of non-verbal communication in such situations has been widely recognized. In this study, we conducted an experiment to compare communication at a travel agency desk, using remote communication system with live-action images or with avatar images, and face-to-face conversation. Here we reported the gaze behavior comparison between customers and clerks, including the effect of customer's age, too. Results showed that the duration of each gaze was longer in remote system, indicating that visual processing may take more time than the face-to-face situation. In addition, regardless of conversation environments, younger customers showed collaborative problem-solving behavior, in which a clerk and a customer looked at each other equally. On the other hand, with older customers, clerks looked at customers more often, implying that because older customers were easy to become more problem-solving oriented, communication loads on clerks were placed asymmetrically.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

Relative embodiment (RE), that is, the extent to which the meaning of a verb is related to physical movement, plays an important role in verb processing. In this study, we investigated how the concreteness of the prime noun affects the processing of high-RE verbs. We manipulated the type of word pair defined by the concreteness of the noun and the RE of the verb, and the grammaticality of the case particle linking the noun and verb. Participants decided whether the word presented after the nominal phrase was a verb or a noun. High-RE verbs paired with high-concrete nouns were processed faster than low-RE verbs paired with low-concrete nouns, although high-RE verbs paired with low-concrete nouns did not display a similar effect. Moreover, there were no interactions between word pair type and grammaticality. This result can be explained by the fact that the task was designed to focus only on verbs.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

Evaluating the "deliciousness" of a food is complicated by the diversity of people who eat it, in addition to the fact that the itself is multifaceted. In this study, we focused on changes in emotions during food intake to evaluate humans, who have such diversity. In order to clarify the relationship between food intake and associated emotions, we attempted to quantify emotions based on the Russell’s circumplex model, which consists of two dimensions: arousal-sleepiness and pleasant-unpleasant. First, the participants were asked about the most memorable foods eaten within the past few days, and then asked to recall the actual mood they felt when consuming it, and words and phrases related to emotions were collected through free descriptions. Based on the results, words and phrases usable in the circumplex model were selected, and emotional coordinates for food intake were created. Using this coordinate, we will discuss their relationship to food.

View full abstract

Sense of agency (SoA) is a feeling that one’s action affected the outer object. When one’s action and the outcome are associated, people feel the time interval is shorter (Intentional Binding: IB). IB is used as an implicit measure of the SoA. People have “self-serving bias,” that we show stronger IB (SoA) to positive outcomes of our actions compared to negative outcomes. However, self-serving bias is found inhibited in individuals with depression. Previous studies mainly use audio stimuli as the outcome, but rarely use visual stimuli which is more likely to be the feedback from others in real life, and the direct relation between self-serving bias in IB and depressive symptoms has not been investigated. In this study, we measured self-serving bias by IB to emotional faces and examined the relation with depressive scores. While the results supported the existence of self-serving bias, the relation with depression needs detailed discussion.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the factors that influence attitudes toward Covid-19 vaccination. In particular, we will examine affect toward the vaccine and perceptions of its effectiveness, as well as neumeracy, which plays an important role in health risk/benefit perceptions. In this study, we conducted a web-based survey in late August 2021 during the fifth wave of the new coronavirus epidemic, targeting 1103 unvaccinated men and women aged 20-70 years nationwide. The results showed a strong association between acceptance of vaccination and affect toward vaccines and perceptions of vaccine effectiveness. Furthermore, the detailed process of attitude formation toward vaccination was clarified by analyzing the relationship between each of the factors strongly associated with acceptance the scores of neumeracy, distribution of surrounding opinions, and trust in information sources, as well as the differences between the influenza and cervical cancer vaccines.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract