Negative interpretations of situations and inflexible updating of the interpretations are possible risk factors for mental illness. In Study 1 （N=196）, we examined the validity of a shortened Japanese version of an emotional Bias Against Disconfirmatory Evidence （BADE） task that measures interpretation bias and interpretation flexibility. The results showed convergent validities with the relevant scales and that interpretation bias and interpretation inflexibility were associated with high levels of depressive symptoms. Study 2 （N=191） aimed to examine whether interpretation bias and interpretation inflexibility are correlated with rumination and its subtypes of brooding and reflection. Results showed that while interpretation bias was related to brooding, interpretation inflexibility was related to reflection. These findings indicate that interpretation bias and interpretation inflexibility are related to rumination through distinct mechanisms and that psychological interventions targeting both may be beneficial in treating depression.

The orientation of a handle has been found to influence the reaction time required to grasp a tool in a two-choice task. This effect has been attributed to two factors: the affordance of the tool and the perceptual salience of its shape. To disentangle these factors, this study compared the reaction times required to manipulate the same physical tool for different intended actions. Right-handed university students （N=38） were instructed to reach for a real kettle with either their left or right hand, and to grasp and lift it either to use it （i.e., pour water） or to move it. The reaction time between stimulus presentation and action onset （i.e., releasing a button at the starting position） and the movement time between releasing the button and lifting the kettle were measured. The results showed that although reaction times were not affected by handle orientation and action type, movement times were shorter only in the use （pouring） condition when the grasping hand matched the handle orientation than when it did not. This finding suggests that the perception of affordance can facilitate the specific hand movements required for specific actions, independent of the perceptual salience of an object’s shape.

In this study using the incidental-learning paradigm, we examine the relationships between object category at encoding and object memory performance and how the relationships change depending on the presentation context of target objects. The results suggest that, compared to both functional and basic categories, memory performance for superordinate categories was influenced by task context. Moreover, memory performance for functional and basic categories was higher than for superordinate categories in conditions where distractor and target objects were from different categories. These results indicate that, although functional categories are abstract in nature, they are less influenced by context because they are core concepts in the representation of artificial objects. This study elucidates the concept of function and highlights the importance of contextual information when investigating the conceptual processing of objects.

Many individuals engage in subvocalization during silent reading. Morita & Takahashi （2019） argue that subvocalization and vocalization have similar functions based on their study that manipulated them in a reading comprehension task. However, there is yet no support for the assumption that the eye-movement patterns of readers who frequently subvocalize whilst reading should resemble those of reading aloud. The present study is a modified replication of Morita and Takahashi’s Experiment 2. Forty undergraduate and graduate participants were asked to read 12 short stories as their eye-movements were tracked and their subvocalization frequencies were measured. The results indicated the readers who frequently subvocalized exhibited longer reading times with more fixations whilst reading silently compared to readers who subvocalized less frequently, which is consistent with our hypothesis. However, further research is warranted because the method used to measure subvocalization frequencies is not sufficiently reliable.

This study developed the Japanese version of the Physical Appearance Perfectionism Scale （PAPS）, which measures the adaptive and maladaptive aspects of perfectionism with a focus on the physical appearance domain. Study 1 translated the original scale into Japanese and examined its factor structure. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed （n=545）, and the results replicated the original two-factor structure of “Hope for Perfection” and “Worry about Imperfection”. Study 2 confirmed convergent validity using the relevant existing scales. Partial correlation analysis （n=655） generally replicated the original study’s findings. Study 3 examined the scale’s test-retest reliability. Correlation analysis （n=158） confirmed high reliability, similar to that of the original study. These results indicate that the Japanese version of the PAPS has high validity and reliability.

The concealed information test (CIT) is a technique for detecting concealed information related to criminal activity by presenting a series of questions to examinees and comparing their responses. Notwithstanding active research into reaction time-based CITs (RT-CIT), their practical applications have been limited to CITs based on responses from the autonomic nervous system. This is due to methodological limitations inherent within the conventional RT-CIT paradigm that restrict questions to known case facts. To address these limitations, we test a novel RT-CIT task that utilizes “inhibition of return” (IOR); a phenomenon where target detection is delayed when subsequent stimuli appear at a cued location within the spatial cueing paradigm. Participants were required to perform the task while retaining a specific number concealed in memory. In Experiment 1, the results of exploratory analysis indicate that IOR was partially reduced when a cue represented concealed information. However, such results were not replicated in Experiment 2. We discuss the reasons for the low robustness of this effect and consider possible future developments.