Human-machine interaction (HMI) systems, such as automatic driving, often require people to detect errors in the machines. However, the better the system becomes, the less frequently system errors occur and the more easily they are missed. This is known as the low-prevalence effect (Wolfe et al., 2005). For social implementation of HMI, what kind of people easily miss and how much improvement can be expected through intervention should be clarified. This study examined the performance of 600 participants in 20s to 70s in an online visual search task with targets appearing rarely (2%) and the effect of a short-term intervention that increased target frequency (50%). The intervention temporarily reduced misses, but they still occurred more than 50% of the time. Moreover, younger ages had a faster increase in misses after the intervention. These characteristics should be considered in implementing a system with a lower frequency of events to be detected.

View full abstract

In recent years, it has been suggested that one of the factors contributing to "Zoom fatigue," is the effect of "Mirror Anxiety" caused by the presentation of a self-mirror image on the screen (Fauville et al., 2021).
Therefore this study investigated the effects of self-mirror image presentation (stimuli) during cognitive tasks on the relationship between anxiety and cognitive processing.
Each subject performed a Stroop task under two conditions, with and without stimuli. Anxiety (STAI), reaction time (RT), autonomic indices such as heart rate variability, and eye movements during task were measured. Whether the stimuli were presented in the first （condition 1） or second task (condition 2) was randomly assigned to each participant.
The results showed a negative correlation between trait anxiety and RT, as well as a negative correlation between trait anxiety and the difference in RT between tasks, and this relationship was strengthened in condition 1.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

The sense of body ownership, the feeling that “my body belongs to me,” has been examined by the full body illusion (FBI) and others. In case studies of depersonalization with symptoms of difficulty in feeling that sense, it has been pointed out that the symptoms are chronic due to distortions in top-down cognition. In this study, we examined the relationship between the effects of top-down cognition on the sense of body ownership and depersonalization tendencies by adding manipulations of top-down cognition to the FBI procedure. The manipulations were performed before inducing the FBI. The degree of the FBI was measured by the skin conductance responses. The results showed that the higher the degree of depersonalization, the lower the degree of illusion when participants were made to regard a fake body as their own body. This suggests that top-down cognition may lead to a decreased sense of body ownership in depersonalization.

View full abstract

We investigated the effects of global optic flow (GF), resulting from observer movement, and of local optic flow (LF), resulting from object movement on visual search, respectively. The task was to visually search for a number that appeared at one of the eight placeholders that were equidistant from the center of the screen and equally spaced from each other, and to press the button as quickly as possible after identifying the number. In both conditions, LF was presented at one of the eight placeholders, and the target number was presented at the same time when the LF disappeared, or after a certain period of time. The experimental results showed a significant interaction between “the distance between LF and the target” and “the time interval between the disappearance of LF and the presentation of the target” in the reaction time. These results are discussed in relation to the gaze data acquired.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

Sanitary masks improve the physical attractiveness regardless of wearers’ ages. This effect occurs because masks occlude unfavorable facial features. However, it is unclear whether this effect of occlusion applies to other facial cognitions beyond physical attractiveness. Given that wearing a mask occludes wrinkles around the mouth as a characteristic feature of the elderly, the wearer’s age would be perceived as younger than that of the mask-free face. The present study examined whether wearing a mask produces positive effects on seven facial dimensions (age, attractiveness, likeability, distinctiveness, goal orientation, energy, and mood) of elderly and young wearers’ faces. The results indicated that mask-worn young faces were perceived as younger than mask-free faces. Moreover, those faces were perceived as more attractive and likable. However, no such effects occurred for elderly faces. These findings suggested that the occlusion effect of sanitary masks depends on the age of the wearers.

View full abstract

Our perceptions are accompanied by subjective confidence such as "definitely," "probably," and "possibly." Previous studies found that such confidence judgments do not depend solely on the accuracy of the perception. Here, we measured perceptual accuracy and confidence by manipulating the importance (precision) of the internal bodily signals or interoception to test whether the ongoing precision of interoception affects the confidence judgment. Specifically, 20 participants (eight males) performed a dot motion direction discrimination task. We manipulated relative precision between intero/exteroception by asking them to direct their attention to interoception (one's heartbeat) or exteroception (tone sound) before each trial in the task. The results showed that subjective confidence after heartbeat attention that would enhance the precision of interoception was more conservative than tone attention, whereas no between-condition differences in perceptual accuracy were found. These findings suggest that the bodily signals may jointly shape subjective confidence in the perception of the external world.

View full abstract

Today, more and more researchers are focusing on intangible assets. Especially, in the field of accounting, intangibles assets are those factors which cast doubts on reliability. In this context, researches pertain to off-balanced intangible assets, intangibles, have been compiled. However, the focused intangibles are on the a posteriori view rather than a priori view. So that, in this research, intangibles are defined as a cognitive process which converts social value into economic value. Although organizational capital, human capital, knowledge capital, so on, inherently exist in every organization, those intangibles are recognized only when an organization know they exist. In this research, two hypotheses are inspected; H1) the more intangibles an organization has, the more frequently the fluctuation of the recognition of intangibles could occur, H2)the decision making process affects the recognition of an organization.

View full abstract

Despite the difficulty of inferring the personality traits and abilities of other persons from facial appearance, some people hold the belief that various traits can be inferenced from the face (i.e., physiognomic beliefs). In fact, facial appearance is known to impact on moral judgments. However, it is unclear how facial appearance influences moral judgments and how the observer’s physiognomic beliefs affect this process. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of the observer’s physiognomic beliefs on the face stereotypes concerning the acts associated with moral violations. In the experiment, multiple images were generated by applying random noises to the average face, and face stereotypes of the immoral-related acts were estimated using the noise-based reverse correlation method. The results showed that the degree of the observer’s physiognomic beliefs does not affect the face stereotypes of immoral-related acts.

View full abstract

In this study, we investigated whether simply inserting one second at the beginning of a question enhanced allocations of cognitive resources and then improved people’s accuracy of judgments in decision-making tasks. In behavioral experiments using a binary-choice perceptual judgment task, participants could respond a question only after one second. During tasks, we recorded participants’ mouse trajectories. In data analyses, we compared the data obtained from the current experiments with one-second waiting time with the data from our previous experiments without waiting time. Our analyses based on response times, responses (correct/false), and mouse trajectories suggested that a simple intervention such as inserting one second could inhibit participants’ impulsivity and could improve their judgmental accuracy. Our approaches, the way of intervention (waiting one second) and investigations of its effects (using only a PC and mouse), are easily implemented and therefore may have potentials of applicability to various fields outside laboratories.

View full abstract

Responding to the lack of cognitive perspectives on semantic inference, this research aims to investigate liking and effort throughout cross-sentence semantic processing. We suppose that if people put more effort into elaborating, they’ll find more semantic inference within that sentence pair, and will also tend to like it more.
We designed a novel paradigm with cross-sentence elaboration task followed by evaluations on semantic inference and liking. For each trial, subjects should elaborate the sentence pair and choose whether to explain their elaboration by speaking out. This voluntary two-option choice varied the trials with voluntary effort and trials without voluntary effort. Results highly proved the hypothesis that semantic inference is positively correlated with liking. Both semantic inference and liking scores are significantly higher for trials with voluntary effort than trials without it. This finding suggested that interlinkages exist among effort, semantic inference and liking during semantic processing.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

We propose a method of utilizing anchor-biased estimates for enhancing wisdom of crowds (aggregation of individual estimates become more accurate estimate). We hypothesize that estimates from diverse perspectives can be obtained from anchor-biased estimations and good wisdom of crowds can be achieved. We conducted behavioral experiments and computer simulations to examine this hypothesis, and found that good wisdom of crowds can be achieved by utilizing anchor-biased estimates.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

This study examined whether retrieval of positive events induced forgetting of negative events of episodic future thinking, and the effects of depression on forgetting of negative episodic future thinking. As a result, we found that retrieval-induced forgetting of negative events occurred only in the non-depressed group. From this result, we concluded that positive retrieval may induce negative events' forgetting of episodic future thinking, and depression may interfere with forgetting of negative episodic future thinking.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate whether short-term chopsticks usage affects kinematics of subsequent reach-to-grasp movements in Japanese participants and whether this effect is modulated by autistic traits. Right-handed participants participated in three sequential sessions: first hand-grasping (PRE), chopstick action (CHP), and second hand-grasping (POST). Two objects were tested: familiar (mockups of sushi) and non-familiar (gray object with the same shape as these mockups) objects. Before the experiment, the participants were also required to answer the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) test. We found a marginally significant positive correlation between transition period from grasping end to uplift initiation and AQ scores in the non-familiar condition while no significant correlation between them in the familiar condition. This result suggests that visual familiarity contributes to improving the action for higher AQ participants.

View full abstract

Face plays an important role in identifying individuals. However, face recognition is known to be easily distorted. We investigated the influence of perceived attractiveness and distinctiveness on the recognition of strangers' faces. Participants judged attractiveness or distinctiveness of a target face presented in the video. Following this, participants were presented a set of five images: one original target face, two anti-caricatured (attractively and indistinctively manipulated) faces, and two caricatured (unattractively and distinctively manipulated) faces, and were asked to select the original target face from the five images. Results showed that when participants judged a face highly attractive, the face was recognised as more attractive than when participants judged a face less attractive. Furthermore, when participants judged a face highly distinctive, the face was recognised as more distinctive than when participants judged a face less distinctive. These results were discussed in terms of research in interpersonal impressions and eyewitness testimony.

View full abstract

Acting together with others changes our cognition. The previous studies investigating shared representation have focused on a case when two actors simultaneously look at the same objects and shown that objects associated with another’s action can be well remembered. The present study investigated whether acting together affected spatial attention deployment among various objects when two actors did not necessarily attend to the same object. We asked pairs of participants to simultaneously search for different targets. Subsequently, in Experiment 1 where they searched for their partner’s targets, search facilitation in the displays that had been repeatedly presented did not occur. Experiment 2 using a surprise memory recognition test revealed that the partner’s search targets were remembered better than distractors simply presented many times. These results suggest that even when actors search for different things, the partner’s targets are implicitly attended to, consequently allowing them to form similar memories.

View full abstract

The role speech plays in cognition has long been an important topic among psychologists and philosophers. Köhler and Koffka, representatives of the Gestalt school, presented a unique method with field theory. The field theory in Gestalt psychology, namely behavioral field theory, breaks through the duality between agents and their behavioral environment, providing a new way to explain behavior. However, unlike sense data, speech does not appear in the sensory field, which generally be regarded as an important part of the behavioral field. Humans’ behavioral field is constituted not only of the sensory field but also of the verbal field. This paper discusses how the verbal field influences cognition and behavior. With verbal field theory, we know what is meant by "limited liberty" of humans in Koffka’s theory of volition. We will see that although humans have voluntary actions, humans have not been liberated from the domination of the field.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

Imagining ambiguous images in episodic future thinking (EFT) leads to various everyday problems. For instance, procrastination, caused by failing to make future preparations, may be related to ambiguity in EFT. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between procrastination and EFT ambiguity. Participants imagined and described three personal events in the future and then performed freely on the tasks requested by the experimenter, scoring the procrastination behavior. Finally, they filled out the General Procrastination Scale and a questionnaire originally designed by the experimenter. The result showed a correlation between EFT ambiguity, especially ambiguity of the five senses and internal perceptual information, and procrastination. The factor analysis of the questionnaire indicates that the individual's executive functions plays the most critical role in procrastination, and thus the ambiguity in the imagery of future sensory information is related to procrastination through its influence on this executive functions.

View full abstract

Mind wandering (MW) is a phenomenon in which thoughts wander to matters unrelated to the action currently being performed. This study focused on the role of interoception, which is the sense of the body’s internal state, as the trigger of MW. Participants completed two tasks, the heartbeat detection task (HDT, Schandry, 1981) and the vigilance task (VT). Based on the performance of HDT, we divided the participants into two groups, high/low interoceptive accuracy group. In the latter half of VT, we presented subliminal vibration stimuli for inducing alteration in heart rate (= vibration block). The results showed that in vibration block, the participants of high interoceptive accuracy group were more likely to report continuation of MW than those of low interoceptive accuracy group. These data suggested that changes in interoception due to subliminal presentation of vibration may induce the generation and the continuation of MW in individuals with accurate interoception.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

We have focused on the aesthetic appreciation of haiku, classifying ambiguity into cognitive and emotional ambiguity and examining their relationship to beauty. The results showed that cognitive and emotional ambiguity explain the beauty of haiku in different ways. By subdividing the two factors, this study aimed to identify more precisely the ambiguity factors evoked during haiku appreciation. First, a free-text and interview research was conducted with 50 haiku semi-experts, and eight factors were suggested through the KJ method. Then, 60 participants were asked to evaluate 10 haiku from the perspective of the 8 factors of ambiguity, and factor analysis finally identified 4 factors: ambiguity of scene, ambiguity of association, ambiguity of interpretation, and ambiguity of emotion. They showed moderate positive correlations with each other, indicating that they are similar but different concepts, and that the three factors except for ambiguity of interpretation were negatively correlated with the beauty of haiku.

View full abstract

We examined how different color coding of a Japanese text impacts the reading performance. Forty participants were asked to read the text aloud 5 times, each with a different color coding, and their voice was recorded. The readability was measured by a readability scale each time when the participant finished reading. Every reader answered 10 questions about the content of the text only after the first time of reading. Results showed that color coding did not influence the understanding, but reading speed was found to enhance when the text was coded by Japanese phrases or by word and slowed down when the color changed within a word. Despite the effectiveness of phrase or word coding, the participants scaled monotone coding as the easiest to read. The result implies that color coding by phrase or by word may be used to improve readability of Japanese reading materials.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

Individuals with high anxiety have a specific tendency to update beliefs based on the given information in ambiguous situations. However, it is unclear what aspect of information evaluation is specific in individuals with high anxiety. We explored the factor of these changes by applying the Bayesian update to the bead task. In the task, we presented two bins containing beads of two different colors in different proportions. Each time a bead was presented, they reported a subjective belief about the bin from which the beads were extracted. In the analysis, we assumed that the current confidence was obtained by adding the information of the current bead to the confidence at the previous time point. We then estimated whether individuals were more evaluated on the previous confidence or the current information. The results showed that individuals with high anxiety underestimated the information obtained from the current bead.

View full abstract

To examine the influence of verbal labels on response selection, the association between the verbal labels and the task set was manipulated. In the task-set group, different response sets were used for odd-even and large-small judgments, and the participants performed either judgment task depending on the cue. In the response-set group, the judgments to be made remained unchanged as either odd or even judgments. However, the participants were instructed two response-sets and performed the task using one of the response sets depending on the cue.
The results showed that when repeating the same set as the previous trial, the task-set group tended to make faster responses than the response-set group. This suggested that the response-set group, which was less likely to use verbal labels such as "odd-even" and "large and small," was more susceptible to influence from competing response sets, even when the response set was repeated.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

This study examined the association between the simultaneous endorsement of contradictory conspiracy theories and analytic thinking. Although previous studies have indicated that the association between contradictory conspiracy beliefs disappears when the core conspiracy belief (cover-up by authorities) is controlled, our previous study (Majima et al., 2021) showed that this association remains significant even after the control of the core conspiracy belief. The present study was conducted to investigate the possibility that a low propensity for analytical thinking is related to the simultaneous endorsement of contradictory beliefs. Results of the survey with 199 participants showed a negative correlation between the endorsement of contradictory conspiracy beliefs and analytic thinking, but after controlling for core conspiracy beliefs, the partial correlation coefficient between them was no longer significant. The present finding that analytic thinking does not necessarily suppress irrational beliefs is consistent with the findings that motivated reasoning lies behind beliefs.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

Positive and negative emotions are associated with upper and lower spaces, respectively (space-valence metaphor). Previous research showed that this association has been observed in 22 languages. We conducted field-based studies on ethnic minorities to explore this association related to culture and customs in non-WEIRD people. We found that the Yao showed different results from other ethnic groups and discussed the possible influence of their living environment and special method of carrying burdens. To test the effect of these factors, the present study conducted an experiment with the “Bangbang” in Chongqing, a group similar to the Yao in their living environment and method of carrying burdens. The word allocation task showed that space-valence metaphor effects were not observed in the Bangbang, as in the Yao. These findings supported our hypothesis that the way of carrying burdens and the hilly environment play a significant role in the generation of the space-valence metaphor.

View full abstract

It is known that reading stories can cause changes in mood. However, since experimental results on mood change due to story reading have been inconsistent, we hypothesized that the effect of story reading on mood change could be moderated by various individual difference factors. In this study, we explored the individual difference factors for mood change due to story reading using five indices that measure individual characteristics. Hierarchical cluster analysis of the values of the emotional state scale before and after reading revealed three clusters: “negative resolution”, “increased calmness”, and “slight change in mood”. Comparing the reading characteristics for each cluster, significant differences were found in NTS-SF(Osanai, 2016), which measures the state of transportation into a story. Participant characteristics also showed some significant trends. The results revealed that the individual difference factors were a moderating mood change, but also suggested the need to examine states during reading in more detail.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

“Conformity” has been talked about in relation to the coronavirus pandemic. However, whether "conformity" is due to cultural backgrounds is still unclear. In this study, we examined the influence of the others’ facial expressions on their decision making (conformative opinion change) during discussions, considering characteristics of online communication tools and the narrow range of visibility of group members' faces. We also examined whether differences in cultural self-construal influence this effect. In the experiment, a video was created to simulate an online communication tool, consisting of one speaker expressing an opinion and the others’ facial expressions changing to agree or disagree. The participants responded to a questionnaire in which they agreed or disagreed with the opinions, and completed an Independent-Interdependent Self-construal Scale. The results show that others' facial expressions influence decision making during discussions and people with a higher tendency toward interdependence are more likely to be influenced by such expressions.

View full abstract

Collocations are combinations of two or more words that habitually occur together. Because there are no grammatical rules for collocations, speakers would need to have sufficient knowledge of the language to be able use collocations appropriately. This present study investigated the influence of first language (L1) on second language (L2) collocational processing. L1 English speakers and intermediate and advanced learners of L2 English rated the acceptability of 75 collocational phrases comprising three collocational patterns (i.e., English-based vs Japanese-only vs Random Combination) on an 8-point Likert scale. Of particular interest was the result that the acceptability of the Japanese-only items was significantly higher for the L2 participants than for the L1 participants. This suggests the effect of language proficiency on collocational processing in that L2 speakers are more susceptible to the collocational knowledge of their L1 (Japanese) when evaluating collocations given in their L2 (English).

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

Studies on perception of masked faces are promoted by daily use of sanitary masks in response to COVID-19 epidemic. Two models provide predictions of attractiveness perceived from faces wearing masks: the amplification model (Orghian & Hidalgo, 2020) predicts that masks increase facial attractiveness, whereas the normalization model (Miyazaki & Kawahara, 2016) predicts an interaction due to reduction of distinctive features. The present study examined these models using free-choice tasks. Participants chose to reveal a face photograph from one of the two piles at a time. In Experiment 1, one pile consisted of highly attractive male masked faces and the other consisted of equivalent male unmasked faces The results indicated that female participants were more likely to choose the unmasked pile, while male participants demonstrated no such tendency. Experiment 2 replicated this pattern of biased opposite-sex preference with female photographs. These results supported the normalization model over the amplification model.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract