This study focuses on the challenge of “social barriers” that arise when music fans’ strong desire to “share their favorite music with others” conflicts with social norms, examined from the perspective of social accessibility. To resolve this dilemma, we propose Music Leak2 that shares music information through wireless signals rather than sound waves. This system represents an inclusive interface that aims to balance senders’ expression desires with others’ rights to seek tranquility by completely delegating discretionary control to receivers. To validate the effectiveness of this system, we conducted an experiential interview study with an enthusiastic fan (N=1). Qualitative analysis revealed that while the system can technically provide an environment where “only those who want to listen can hear, and those who don’t want to listen don’t have to”, this alone is insufficient to completely eliminate the strong psychological barriers that senders experience regarding “potentially bothering others.” The participant suggested that without “reassurance” that their actions are being accepted, such as visualization of receivers’ situations, they would not engage in active transmission behaviors. Furthermore, the access barrier identified was not ”evangelism itself” but ”the opportunity to connect with fellow fans in everyday spaces through musical expression.” Conventional social norms restricted transmission, which also prevented reception and confirmation of nearby fellow fans’ presence, revealing a dual access barrier structure. The system’s value lies in creating opportunities for both encountering and confirming fellow fans through mutual transmission and reception, rather than evangelism to unspecified masses.

This study examined the effects of cognitive–physical dual-task exercise using a ground-walking training robot. Few studies have evaluated dual-task training under actual ground-walking conditions while using a support system designed to minimize fall risk. In this study, older participants were assigned to a dual-task group (DT), who performed cognitive and physical tasks simultaneously, or a single-task group (ST), who performed them sequentially. Training was conducted twice weekly for four weeks, and cognitive and physical functions were assessed at pre-, post-, and three-month follow-up. In this exploratory analysis, DT participants showed greater improvements in cognitive response speed (TOVA) and in physical measures such as grip strength and the two-step test than ST participants. Questionnaire responses also suggested favorable changes in walking-related confidence, including reduced fall anxiety and higher self-reported walking frequency. These findings provide exploratory indications that ground-based dual-task training supported by a safety-assured walking robot may offer benefits for cognitive and physical function in older adults, and highlight potential targets for future confirmatory research.

This study explores the use of generative AI to support reminiscence therapy for elderly. We developed a system that combines a chatbot with an image generation model capable of producing new images based on the ongoing dialogue. The goal was to examine whether dynamically generated visuals could stimulate memory recall and reduce caregivers’ burden during therapy. Two experiments were conducted: a preliminary study with elderly and a follow-up study with individuals with moderate to severe dementia. Through detailed analysis of the studies, the results revealed that participants were more likely to choose and discuss people-related topics―such as family members or friends―than those focused on objects or places. The phrasing of AI-generated questions was also found to strongly influence conversational flow, while even partially inaccurate images sometimes encouraged discussion and facilitated reminiscence. Future work will explore the use of voice interaction and embodied avatars, and further fine-tuning of system components to better accommodate the cognitive and emotional characteristics of elderly users.

Approximately 40% of stroke survivors suffer from motor dysfunction. Approximately 30% of stroke patients suffer from aphasia. Hemiplegia is a typical example of a stroke sequela. Aphasia may also occur. In this study, we developed a myoelectric-computer interface (MCI) to support the daily lives and rehabilitation of hemiplegic patients. The MCI communicates the aphasic patient's wishes to a computer by measuring and analyzing myoelectric potentials generated by voluntary movements. The most important feature of the MCI in this study is that the patient can wear, activate, and use it independently. This reflects the needs of the subjects. The subjects in this study were right hemiplegic patients with aphasia. The MCI had three states, and patients were free to operate the MCI. After a one-week training period, a one-week MCI operation experiment was conducted. The MCI operation accuracy was 66.67%. Furthermore, MCI operation accuracy improved over time, and the patients became able to use the MCI freely. From the above, the electromyograph and MCI in this study met the needs of patients and provided a means that could be attached and removed independently.

This study proposes a unique three-dimensional character expression designed to support literacy learning for children with developmental dyslexia. The method focuses on understanding and acquiring correct Japanese kanji stroke order by presenting characters on a digital display, such as a tablet computer. Three-dimensional kanji characters were constructed by mapping stroke order to distinct depth positions, enabling spatial differentiation of strokes. To examine the applicability and educational impact of this approach in tablet-based literacy learning, a study involving children with developmental dyslexia and typically developing children was conducted. Participants observed both flat and three-dimensional kanji characters and provided evaluations of their learning experience. Post-tests were conducted twice which involved soon after the learning session and one week after to assess retention of the target characters. The post-test results indicated that learning with three-dimensional kanji characters shows more accurate than flat kanji characters on stroke order understands. The results suggest that depth cues are a key factor in efficient character recognition and that spatial layout might facilitate the acquisition of geometric information.

Perception of coherent motion is important for understanding the direction of everyday motion, but how coherent motion sensitivity changes with direction and velocity in Infantile Nystagmus Syndrome (INS) remains unclear. This study aimed to clarify the effects of direction and velocity on coherence thresholds using RDK in one INS patient and 10 healthy controls. Results showed a horizontal advantage in the healthy control group, with no effect of velocity. In contrast, in INS, a vertical advantage was consistent across all velocity, with thresholds decreasing with increasing velocity, and the decrease was greater in the horizontal direction. This result suggests that horizontal motion cues, unique to INS, are obscured by retinal image fluctuations. Although this study does not represent the overall INS population because N = 1, the results support the idea that direction discrimination sensitivity differs between INS and healthy controls.

This study investigates whether integrating emotional facial stimuli into cognitive training tasks can activate facial mimicry and enhance motivation. We developed a reaction-based cognitive task presenting dynamic facial expressions of happiness and anger, and evaluated participants’ facial action units (AUs), mood, and motivation using ARCS-based measures. Forty adults completed two experimental conditions: a single-task setting and a multitask setting combining the facial reaction task with a tracking task. Results showed that in the single-task condition, happiness stimuli significantly increased AU12 activation and improved positive mood and motivation scores compared to anger stimuli. In the multitask condition, only the Attention factor showed a significant improvement for happiness stimuli, whereas other indicators did not differ significantly across conditions. Facial mimicry and motivational changes were thus observed, but their magnitude varied across indicators and diminished under increased cognitive load. These results suggest that positive facial expressions embedded within cognitive tasks may influence affective and motivational responses, particularly when cognitive load is low, although the effects are limited and factor-dependent. This study provides preliminary implications for the design of emotionally supportive cognitive training tasks.

This study quantitatively investigates the effects of a neural network-based target-speech extraction method on listening effort among deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) participants in Japanese multispeaker environments. A five-point listening-effort test was conducted with 22 participants (11 DHH, 11 normal-hearing), who rated both mixtures and extracted speech samples across three signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs; 0, 10, and 20 dB) and two speakers. To appropriately handle ordinal-scale ratings, we employed ordinal logistic mixed models and their hierarchical Bayesian extensions, jointly examining the interactions among SNR, speaker, and participant group. The models showed consistent trends: target-speech extraction benefits were most pronounced at low to mid SNRs, whereas group differences between DHH and normal-hearing participants were observed at high SNR (20 dB). These findings clarify when target-speech extraction most effectively reduces listening effort for DHH participants, providing engineering insights into speech-enhancement technologies for inclusive and accessible real-world speech communication.

This study developed a compact, portable robot that provides two types of touch care—tapping and stroking. Their psychological and physiological effects were experimentally compared using multiple indices: heart rate, LF/HF ratio, salivary amylase, the Temporary Mood Scale (TMS), and the Emotional Relaxation Scale (ERS). Both tapping and stroking significantly decreased heart rate and LF/HF ratio, indicating similar parasympathetic activation. In contrast, salivary amylase, an index of sympathetic activity, showed a significant difference in its change between the two conditions; tapping induced a decreasing trend, while stroking induced an increasing trend. However, subjective ratings on all 28 TMS and ERS items showed no significant differences between the two modalities. This divergence between the significant sympathetic difference and the lack of subjective difference suggests distinct emotional mechanisms. We hypothesize that the increase in amylase during stroking reflects “positive arousal” rather than stress, as it was not accompanied by negative subjective reports. Overall, these findings highlight the importance of evaluating affective robotics for relaxation support using multi-modal indices that capture sympathetic, parasympathetic, and subjective responses.

Active learning has been gaining attention in recent years and is being introduced in various educational settings because it is more effective than traditional lecture-style learning. In active learning, educators need to effectively facilitate learning to enhance its quality; however, as the number of groups increases, it becomes increasingly difficult to monitor learning progress. This study aims to investigate the impact of speech content and body movements on indicators related to idea quality in idea-generation group work, with the goal of real-time monitoring of participants’ situations. Specifically, we analyzed the relationship between part-of-speech frequency and body movement duration in each phase, peer reviews and expert evaluations of idea quality, and responses to self-assessment questionnaires on communication. The results revealed that specific words supporting concrete thinking, such as suffixes and actions like manipulating paper, are associated with idea quality.

Train conductors use their gaze to ensure passenger safety from arrival at the station to the departure. Previous studies have qualitatively indicated the differences in gaze behavior during safety confirmation between novice and expert conductors. However, the quantitative characteristics of these gaze behaviors have not yet been clarified. Moreover, it remains unclear whether such behaviors change depending on the timing leading up to train departure. The objective of this study is to clarify the differences of gaze behavior during the safety confirmation depending on the skill level of the conductors and over time. In an experiment within a virtual environment reproducing a train station, novice and expert conductors performed the safety confirmation. We collected 206 valid gaze data and analyzed in terms of average and cumulative gaze duration, as well as average gaze movement distance and velocity. The results showed that the experts significantly confirmed the safety centering on the direction of the first car of the train compared to the novices. Besides, in the time immediately before the departure, experts more frequently confirmed the essential area for departure. Based on these findings, this paper discusses potential applications for improving the education and training of novice conductors.

This study proposed a simulation board game designed to help nurses and other healthcare professionals develop the creativity and judgment necessary to respond to various problems that arise in hospitals during the weeks immediately following a large-scale disaster, until medical facilities are restored. The board game aims to enable medical professionals to (1) visualize specific problems that arise in hospitals after disasters, (2) improve their creativity in dealing with such problems, (3) improve their decision-making skills in dealing with such problems, and (4) learn how to respond to problems over the medium to long term. We evaluated its effectiveness with nursing experts. The result suggested that this game is highly effective in improving the ability to visualize problems, generate ideas for problem-solving, and make decisions. However, further improvements are needed to train participants in responding to medium- to long-term problems.

This study presents a metacognitive approach for identifying workers who may be at higher risk of occupational accidents due to human error. We developed a cognitive evaluation map that objectively compares cognitive performance with workers’ self-assessed executive function and examines whether this discrepancy can reveal individuals likely to overlook situational changes. Participants were divided into four groups based on their cognitive test scores and self-ratings. Those with low cognitive ability but high self-assessment, the overconfident group, performed significantly worse on change blindness tasks, showing a stronger tendency to miss environmental changes than the other groups. Statistical analyses confirmed that a mismatch between actual ability and self-evaluation, particularly when paired with overconfidence, increases the likelihood of oversight. These results suggest that workplace safety assessments could be strengthened by focusing on general metacognitive patterns rather than job-specific skills. The proposed method offers a practical tool for spotting workers prone to errors and supports prevention efforts through targeted feedback, education, and placement.

In group face-to-face chats, conversation topics often change dynamically. This characteristic causes challenges for participants (leavers) in rejoining the chat after temporarily leaving due to short errands or obligations, as the topic may shift during their absence. Asking other participants (conversers) about the current topic can disrupt the conversation flow and it makes leavers hesitate to do so. To support smooth rejoining, this study proposes a conversation summarization system that presents a summary of the conversation during the leaver’s absence to the leaver. Considering the topic transitions in chats, the system provides a recent conversation summary that focuses primarily on the most recent conversation, which is assumed to be particularly important for rejoining. In a preliminary experiment comparing a general summary with the recent conversation summary, the results suggested that the recent one increased the ease of grasping the conversation content and reduced participants’ subjective perception of the time required to rejoin. Furthermore, in an experiment involving actual face-to-face conversations, the proposed method helped leavers feel they could smoothly rejoin the conversation. These findings suggest that presenting conversation summaries, especially those emphasizing recent content, prior to a leaver’s return can facilitate smoother rejoining for both the leaver and the conversers.

In this study, we propose a music co-listening agent that expresses pleasure/displeasure in response to the brightness of chords, tension in response to unstable chords, and a sense of relief in response to the progression from unstable to stable chords. First, we examined the appropriateness of the facial expressions of the chord co-listening agent and, based on this, their effects on users’ sense of empathy toward the agent and on the chord-listening experience (Experiment 1). The results showed that (1-a) with respect to the appropriateness of facial expressions, the agent’s emotional transitions enhanced the naturalness of both the chord progressions and the facial expressions, indicating that the proposed method produced facial expression changes that were appropriate and consistent with the chords. In addition, (1-b) the agent was perceived as another co-listener, and the results suggested that the agent facilitated users’ sense of empathy, confirming its effect on enhancing user empathy. Furthermore, (1-c) co-listening with the agent improved the enjoyment and pleasantness of listening to chord progressions. Next, we investigated the effects of individual musical experience, the appropriate intensity of the agent’s facial expressions, and the effectiveness of relief expressions through sighing behavior (Experiment 2). The results showed that (2-a) the sigh expression conveyed an impression of relief, as intended by the proposed system. Moreover, (2-b) combining strong facial expression intensity with sigh expressions enhanced the impression that the agent’s emotional transitions were aligned with the chord progressions, led users to perceive the agent as a co-listener, and facilitated a sense of empathy toward the agent. Finally, (2-c) these effects were found to be more pronounced in participants with musical experience than in those without musical experience.