In this study, we apply an artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm to the interactive evolutionary computation (IEC) method for the multimodal retrieval of candidate solutions in a Kansei space having multimodal preferences. Previous IEC methods often used a genetic algorithm (GA) method for evolutionary algorithm; retrieving multimodal candidates using these methods were difficult. Therefore, we propose an IEC method with the ABC algorithm for the multimodal and simultaneous retrieval of candidate solutions. We perform numerical simulations with a pseudo user that imitates multimodal preferences as target candidate solutions, instead of a real user. The practical aspect of the proposed method assumes to employ user gaze information for evaluating candidates. Moreover, we set the numerical simulation condition based on a real situation. The results show that the proposed method was more effective for retrieving multimodal candidates than the compared method for practical numbers of candidates and generations.

This study aimed to investigate sensory hypersensitivity among university students. A 27-item questionnaire contained statements of modality-specific sensitivity (visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, and tactile). A total of 65 Japanese undergraduate students and 31 Chinese master’s students majoring in design were enrolled in the study. The results showed that (i) Design major students in the two countries reported a similar tendency of modality-specific sensitivity, and they all mostly involved visual hypersensitivity. (ii) Chinese students reported sensory hypersensitivity problems more frequently than Japanese students in all five domains. (iii) More Chinese students preferred coping with the sensory hypersensitivity by avoidance than Japanese students, whereas more Japanese students preferred coping with it by bearing. Our study suggests that the prevalence of and coping strategies for sensory hypersensitivity differs between the countries.

Sleep condition after an operation is disturbed by the treatment and its invasiveness. However, the effect of minimally invasive operations on the sleep of patients remains unknown. We report a case study observing the sleep condition during the perioperative period of a gynecomastia-patient. Sleep estimation-data from electroencephalography (EEG) and the Oguri-Shirakawa-Azumi (OSA) sleep inventory were recorded for 6 days, beginning from the night before the operation and continuing until the morning of the 5th day after surgery. EEG data showed that the rapid eye movement (REM) stage and non-REM (NREM) stage 3 were almost indiscernible on the night after the operation, whereas NREM stage 1 and the awakening stage notably increased. Preoperative sleep condition recovered after 2 days. Furthermore, scores of OSA sleep inventory decreased on the operation day and postoperative day 1. These results indicate that temporary sleep disturbance in the postoperative period might occur regardless of the invasiveness.

Wooden panels that are made of glueing elements with various appearances, involve numerous visual combinations. Although craftspeople believe that homogeneous patterns are desirable, it is helpful to clarify the acceptability of heterogeneous patterns from the perspective of sustainability. This study classified individuals based on their evaluation tendencies and examined their preferences. We performed a subjective evaluation of 17 sample images of 109 participants using an online survey. Consequently, it was found that patterns evaluated as “even” are generally more preferred. However, the classified clusters showed differences in their evaluation tendencies. For instance, the general consumer group confirmed only “heterogeneity” and the expert group felt “naturalness” from all samples. Additionally, there was a cluster that might have derived additional value from more homogeneous patterns. We conclude that an even appearance is desired, and additional information illustrating the characters of the wooden panel is needed to release unique patterns.

Face masks interfere with social interactions, as they cover facial expressions that communicate personality, intentions, and emotions, and consequently impede smooth communication. This study designed and implemented a smart fashion accessory that communicates positive emotions to others, even when wearing a face mask, and evaluated its psychological effects. The design of the smart fashion accessory integrates headbands, earrings, and chokers. The electromyography (EMG) of the facial muscles was measured to identify positive facial expressions hidden by the mask. The integrated smart fashion accessory controls the red-green-blue (RGB) light-emitting diode (LED) emission pattern built into the earrings according to the facial expression recognized by the EMG. Hue rotation and white blink were set as RGB LED emission patterns, and their psychological effects were evaluated in the experiment. The result confirmed that “active,” “enthusiastic,” and “excited” expressions hidden by the mask were transmitted by the integrated smart fashion accessory.

Gender ambiguous voice agents have been considered as a way to reduce gender bias and harmful stereotyping on Voice User Interfaces (VUI). This study explores a method for designing gender ambiguous voice agents for VUIs and investigates its effects on two usability factors: Ease of Understanding and Pleasantness. To conduct this investigation, pitch shift is applied to morph nine voice agents towards the opposite gender, which six are natural voice agents from different positions in the gender spectrum and three are artificial. N=37 participants completed an online experiment to evaluate their perception of gender and usability factors in eighteen scenarios. Our findings indicate that pitch shift is effective in morphing the voice agents to sound as gender ambiguous, and that these voice agents have an effect on perception of the usability factors. Also, results showed that the participant gender impact on how the usability factors are perceived, mainly for Pleasantness.

Recognizing facial expressions and estimating their corresponding action units’ intensities have achieved many milestones. However, such estimating is still challenging due to subtle action units’ variations during emotional arousal. The latest approaches are confined to the probabilistic models’ characteristics that model action units’ relationships. Considering ordinal relationships across an emotional transition sequence, we propose two metric learning approaches with self-attention-based triplet and Siamese networks to estimate emotional intensities. Our emotion expert branches use shifted-window SWIN-transformer which restricts self-attention computation to adjacent windows while also allowing for cross-window connection. This offers flexible modeling at various scales of action units with high performance. We evaluated our network’s spatial and time-based feature localization on CK+, KDEF-dyn, AFEW, SAMM, and CASME-II datasets. They outperform deep learning state-of-the-art methods in micro-expression detection on the latter two datasets with 2.4% and 2.6% UAR respectively. Ablation studies highlight the strength of our design with a thorough analysis.

Hot springs are a major attraction for domestic tourists in Japan. Evoking a favorable impression of the experience during the information-gathering stage of travel is important in order to attract prospective tourists. Previous findings have suggested that the photographic presentation of a hot-spring hotel can serve as a medium for hotel managers to attract prospective tourists. In the current online questionnaire study, five hundred and eighteen prospective Japanese tourists were asked to rate their affective reactions, cognitive evaluations, behavioral intentions, and willingness to pay (WTP) for two sets of photographic images representing two hot-spring hotels in Japan with traditional and contemporary designs, respectively. The empirical results suggest that the photographic images reflecting a traditional design generated higher affective reactions, cognitive evaluations, behavioral intentions, and WTP. The findings extend the current knowledge on consumers’ perceptions and behavioral intentions and provide practical implications for hotel managers to promote their services and products.

People with high levels of curiosity can find higher levels of positive aesthetic experiences. In this regard, two types of epistemic curiosity should be distinguished: diversive curiosity, which prompts a person to explore a wide range of novel things, and specific curiosity, which prompts a person to resolve conflict in complex events. This study explored the effect of these two types of epistemic curiosity on aesthetic response when participants (Japanese undergraduate students, N = 77) viewed kamon (Japanese family crests). In particular, multilevel modeling results show that individual differences in cognitive appraisals are related to curiosity types. On average, people with high levels of diversive curiosity have a greater capacity to find beauty in their stimuli. On average, people with high levels of specific curiosity regard kamons as more beautiful when perceived as complex. This study revealed that the two types of epistemic curiosity enhance aesthetic experiences through different mechanisms.

The study aimed to examine the physiological and psychological effects of a recently manufactured relaxation chair in healthy adults. This study performed a randomized crossover-controlled trial. I compared two chairs, the relaxation chair and a normal chair as the control condition. Twenty young male adults participated in this study. Results showed that immunoglobulin A, an indicator of anti-stress activity, increased significantly after sitting on the relaxation chair (P<0.05), although the CgA was not significantly different among the four conditions of both chairs. Additionally, each Profile of Mood States score of Anger-Hostility, Confusion-Bewilderment, Tension-Anxiety, and the Total Mood Disturbance subscales decreased significantly, showing the greatest decrease after participants sat on the relaxation chair (P<0.05). Furthermore, the visual analogue scale score for comfort increased significantly after sitting on the relaxation chair, compared to the other three conditions, respectively (P<0.05). Moreover, using the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, the state anxiety scores significantly decreased after sitting on the relaxation chair (P<0.05) among the four conditions, and the trait anxiety scores significantly decreased after sitting on the relaxation chair, related to each pre-condition of both chairs (P<0.05). These results indicate that sitting on the relaxation chair can temporarily alleviate physical and psychological stress in healthy adults.

Erratum
International Journal of Affective Engineering Vol.22 No.1 pp.87-92 (2023)

Figure 1 Caption
Incorrect
Figure 1: Kamons used in this study
* Kamons were taken from the internet [21].
Correct
Figure 1: Kamons used in this study
* Kamons were taken from the internet [20].

Erratum
International Journal of Affective Engineering Vol.16 No.1 pp.21-25 (2017)

p.22 Right column, 3rd line from the bottom

Incorrect
Interclass correlation coefficients (ICC)

Correct
Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC)