The think-aloud method requires participants to verbalize all their thoughts while solving problems. This study examines the influences of the think-aloud protocol on task performance and the relationship between individual differences in utterance levels and working memory capacities. In the experiment, participants solved a version of the Remote Associates Test （RAT） where they were instructed to verbalize their thoughts aloud while required to think of a single Chinese character associated with several presented Chinese characters. The participants were subsequently divided into low and high working-memory capacity groups based on the results of a verbal working-memory span task. The results showed that the degree of utterances decreased with increases in task difficulty in the high working-memory capacity participants but increased in the low working-memory capacity participants. This finding indicates that verbalizing aloud while executing a task may differ as a function of working-memory capacity and as task difficulty varies. Moreover, the results also showed that response times tended to be longer with verbalizations, which indicates that thinking-aloud may interfere with task performance.

Choice overload refers to the phenomenon whereby an excess of product alternatives overloads consumers and suppresses their intentions to purchase. Haynes （2009） demonstrated that overloads occur when time pressures are explicitly presented but subsequent replication studies have not yielded consistent results. In this study, we investigate whether choice overload might be elicited implicitly by feelings of impatience due to others waiting to make a selection （cue condition）. With a waiting line of ten people visible, 56 participants selected and ranked three desirable images from sets that ranged from four or 12 images and then rated their levels of satisfaction and regret concerning their rankings. Another 36 participants performed the same task without exposure to a waiting line （no cue condition）. The results showed that participants in the cue condition exhibited lower levels of satisfaction and higher levels of regret concerning their choices in the 12-image condition. This finding suggests that feelings of impatience due to waiting in line can inhibit selective behaviors by interfering with cognitive control.

Head nodding and shaking motions are important social signals that convey either agreement or negation to others. This study examines the inductive effects of the head nodding and shaking motions of three computer-generated three-dimensional figures （female, male, robot） on social decision-making between two alternatives. We employed a game task where participants had to determine the location of a coin hidden in one of two squares on either side of a central figure. When a participant clicked on one square, the figure would either nod or shake its head, then, after the participant clicked again to either stick with the initially clicked box or switch to the other, the squares would disappear to reveal the coin’s location. The results showed that second-click decisions were induced by the nodding or head-shaking motions of the central figure. Moreover, these inducing effects were observed regardless of figure type （young female, middle-aged male, robot）. These findings suggest that merely seeing nodding or head-shaking motions influences the evaluations and judgments that occur between actors and observers.

Working memory facilitates cognitive activities. Of the important cognitive activities within our daily lives, social activity has recently attracted attention in terms of the specific type of working memory; namely, social working memory. This paper reviews various findings from prior studies that emphasize both the neurological and behavioral differences between social and cognitive (canonical) working memory; findings that underscore the significance of the social working-memory construct. However, it is also evident that there has been a dearth of comprehensive perspectives to account for the findings from previous studies. More specifically, the review identifies four topics that have not been sufficiently addressed: (a) correlations among social working memory tasks; (b) theories concerning the relationship between social working memory and social cognition; (c) distinctions and/or similarities between affective versus social working memory; and (d) the nature of the representations within social working memory. Accordingly, this paper recommends tackling these issues as directions for future research. In focusing on these aspects, it is possible that future studies might elaborate the concept of social working memory and provide a perspective capable of integrating the diverse findings.

When reading stories, readers may experience empathic responses. This study examines whether visuospatial processing is activated within the processes that elicit empathic responses when comprehending stories. We also examine whether the perceptual properties of visuospatial processing are the same as those of mental imagery. More specifically, we conducted a dual-task experiment combing both story comprehension and visuospatial-memory tasks that investigated whether load in the visuospatial-memory task interfered with the empathic responses of story comprehension. The results showed that load in the visuospatial-memory task decreased empathic response scores for story comprehension. However, the results did not observe a relationship between load in the visuospatial-memory task and mental imagery. Accordingly, these findings suggest that visuospatial processing may be involved in empathic responses when comprehending stories, even though the similarities with mental imagery remain unclear.