Although many studies, which have employed the lexical decision task with masked primes presented for less than 50 ms, have not observed semantic priming effects for directly related prime-target pairs, a significant priming effect has been repeatedly reported when a prime is an orthographic neighbor of a target. In order to examine when a significant priming effect arises with masked primes, we conducted a lexical decision task for synonymous prime-target pairs with masked primes presented for 33 ms. We also manipulated the number of senses possessed by the synonymous prime-target pairs. While a significant priming effect was observed using word pairs with few-sense primes and many-sense targets, null effect was observed for word pairs using many-sense primes and few-sense targets. More importantly, for both types of synonymous pairs, lexical decision latencies were modulated by semantic relatedness ratings collected between the prime’s orthographic neighbors and the target. These results suggest that, within the early stages of word recognition, semantic activation arises not only for the presented word itself but also for its orthographic neighbors.

Two experiments that utilized knowledge and intention tasks were conducted to investigate the knowledge-to-intention gap within university students. The knowledge task asked about appropriate behaviors in terms of general knowledge, while the intention task asked about the actions that the participants themselves would select. Irrespective of whether already possessing relevant knowledge, the participants of both experiments were presented with unethical behaviors. In Experiment 1, the proportions of participants who maintained ethical behaviors within both tasks were higher than the proportions of high-school students. Experiment 2 also investigated the three factors of the theory of planned behavior; namely, attitude (ATT), subjective norms (SN), and perceived behavioral control (PBC). The results indicated that, irrespective of factor, positively evaluated behaviors were selected when complying in the intention task. However, the results varied according to factor, when unethical behaviors were selected. More specifically, with respect to ATT, compliant behaviors were evaluated positively while noncompliant behaviors were evaluated negatively, but the results were reversed with regard to PBC. No significant differences related to SNs were observed for ethical and unethical behaviors.

Interventions that involve motor imagery have been shown to be effective for rehabilitation. However, no standard methods have been established for measuring older adults’ capacities for motor imagery. This study compares two simple and easy-to-use methods, which are both conventionally used to measure motor imagery. They are the Movement Imagery Questionnaire-Revised Japanese Version (JMIQ-R), which is a subjective questionnaire, usually used with young adults, and the imagery-pointing task based on Fitts’ Law paradigm. Twelve young adults (mean=24.17 years) and 12 older adults (mean=73.67 years) participated in the experiment. In addition to several cognitive and motor abilities, we measured the participants’ JMIQ-R scores and latencies for both executed and imagined pointing. The results revealed no significant differences between the young and older adults in terms of their JMIQ-R scores. For the pointing task, however, there were significant differences in the older adults’ latencies for the executed and imagined conditions, when a target was small (i.e., the more difficult task), although the latencies for both executed and imagined pointing in younger adults were similar for all targets. Moreover, JMIQ-R scores were not found to be correlated with the differences between executed and imagined pointing, which indicates that these two methods may measure different aspects of motor imagery or may be differentially sensitive to declines in motor imagery. These results suggest that the JMIQ-R questionnaire may not sufficiently capture declines in motor imagery within older adults.

Cognitive slips occur at the various stages of information processing (IP), from perception, thought, and action. Moreover, we often attribute cognitive slips to related causes, such as mind-set (activating inappropriate schema) and attention deficits. Three experiments examine the effects of activation frequencies for inappropriate schema and time pressures on cognitive slips at different IP stages. The tasks employed to induce cognitive slips were a digit-transcription task for reading mistakes (Exp. 1), the water-jar problem for thought fixation (Exp. 2), and a written-repetition task for slips of the pen (Exp. 3). In all experiments, half of the participants engaged in prior trials that evoked inappropriate schema, while half undertook trials that did not activate any specific schema. Moreover, half of the participants were under a time pressure to complete the trials, while half were not. For all three experiments, there were higher incidences of cognitive slips in the inappropriate schema and time-pressure conditions. We discuss the mechanisms underlying cognitive slips at various IP stages.

Prior studies have confirmed the psychological effects of consuming “shikohin”(luxury or indulgent products). This study focuses on autobiographical memory for shikohin and examines the characteristics of reminiscence functions across six age groups and four types of shikohin. We conducted an online survey of 1,800 respondents, ranging from 20 to 79 years of age (M=49.49, SD=16.32), who regularly consume one of four shikohin; namely, alcohol, tea, coffee, and tobacco. The respondents completed a questionnaire about the reminiscence functions of events related to those shikohin. The results revealed age-group differences in terms of reminiscence functions, such as “identity” and “bitterness revival”. The results also indicated differences between shikohin types, such as “boredom reduction” and “conversation”.