This study investigates perception for momentary changes in facial expressions using motion stimuli of faces. Within each set of motion stimuli, a facial expression showing either anger, sadness, or happiness was inserted momentarily, presented for either 130 ms, 220 ms, 330 ms, or 530 ms. One group of participants was asked to rate the level of pleasantness evoked by the complete set of stimuli, while a second group was asked to categorize the inserted facial expression as being happy, sad, angry, or neutral. Pleasantness ratings were higher when the inserted expression was happy compared to sad or angry. Categorization of the inserted facial expressions was quite accurate for angry and happy, but correct categorizations of angry were lower in the 130 ms condition. Although the pattern of results indicate that the participants were sensitive to momentary changes in facial expressions at durations of at least 200 ms, further research is needed to investigate why the perception of momentary changes varies for happy, angry and sad.

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This paper examines the effect of auditory perception on visual temporal-order judgments by focusing on the spatial congruence of auditory and visual stimuli (i.e., right or left). Visual stimuli were presented successively at short intervals, while auditory stimuli were presented before and after the visual stimuli. In the first experiment, the accuracy of visual temporal-order judgments was enhanced by the presence of auditory stimuli when the visual and auditory stimuli were spatially congruent, but the accuracy was reduced when the visual and auditory stimuli were spatially incongruent. These changes in performance were even observed at a long stimulus onset asynchrony between the auditory and visual stimuli (AV-SOA) of 640 ms. In the second experiment, the auditory stimulus presented before the visual stimuli was found to have a greater influence on performance on the visual temporal-order judgment task than the auditory stimulus presented after the visual stimuli. These results indicate that spatial congruence influences auditory capture within visual temporal-order judgments.

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This study examines the effects of pleasantness and arousal on memory. In Experiment 1, 34 participants viewed photographic slides and rated each slide in terms of pleasantness, arousal, and descriptive simplicity. The slides varied along the affective dimensions of pleasantness and arousal. Immediately after viewing all the slides and again one month later, the participants were given incidental memory tests in which they were asked to report on remembered slides. The results of both the immediate and delayed memory tests indicated that for the pleasant slides the participants recalled more low-arousal slides than the high-arousal ones, while for the unpleasant slides they recalled more high-arousal slides than low-arousal ones. Experiment 2 was conducted to replicate the findings from Experiment 1 with revised stimuli and procedure. The results for Experiment 2, with 71 participants, were similar to those obtained in Experiment 1. We argue that the effects of arousal level on memory performance depend on the degree of pleasantness.

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This study examines how preschool children use information about categories in counting dissimilar objects. In Studies 1-4, similar to Gelman and Tucker's (1975) experiment, 5- and 6- year-old participants were asked to count objects falling into two categories. Children of both ages tended to count all objects together in the first three studies but not in Study 4, where different instructions were given to the children. Comparing the results from Studies 1-3 with the result for Study 4, it is argued that task setting (i.e., questions such as “How many things are there?”) can influence the tendency to ignore categorical distinctions. Study 5 was conducted to investigate whether contextual information influences preschoolers' use of categories. In a task of distributing fruits between five stuffed toys, 5- and 6-year-olds were given three kinds of fruits (strawberries, grapes, oranges) and one kind of vegetable (Japanese radishes). While many of the 6-year-olds provided equal quantities of each category, the 5-year-olds tended to only employ the categories in organizing how they carried out their counts for the total number of objects. Thus, although 6-year-olds used information about categories in deciding “what to count”, the 5-year-olds merely used categories to accurately estimate the total number of objects.

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Three experiments, with a total of 120 undergraduates, were carried out to examine whether recognition for words is better when tested against a background-color that matches that at study compared to testing in a context in which no items were studied. The experiments also examined whether presentation rate—a determinant of item strength—interacts with the background-color context. Undergraduate participants studied 40 target words presented at either a rate of 1.5 or 3.0 seconds per word in one of two background-color contexts in Experiment 1, and studied 36 words in one of six contexts in Experiments 2 and 3. Recognition for the targets was tested with lists consisting of equal numbers of distractors and targets, immediately after study in Experiments 1 and 2, and after a 5-minute filled retention interval in Experiment 3. Although no effect on recognition of the background-color context was observed in Experiment 1, context effects were found in Experiments 2 and 3. Presentation rate did not interact with the context effect. The implications of the present findings are discussed.

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This study examines how people recognize familiar and unfamiliar faces, by investigating how inner (eyebrows, eyes, nose, and mouth) and outer (hair, ears, and facial outline) features influence face recognition. Two experiments were conducted in which participants selected from among images of faces, which had been altered to emphasize either the inner or outer features, the best likeness of the person. The two experiments differed in terms of the familiarity of the faces, with familiar faces (such as friends and acquaintances) in Experiment 1 and unfamiliar faces (strangers) in Experiment 2. The results indicated that participants only selected images close to the original when the faces were familiar and the inner features had been manipulated, with participants selecting averaged facial images in the other conditions. Based on these results, this paper claims that the distinctiveness of inner features is exaggerated in the memory representations of familiar faces.

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This paper proposes a new method of characterizing sentence meanings in terms of semantic features. In the first stage of this study, occurrences of the word osou were extracted from a corpus and manually coded, based on the methods used in FrameNet (Fillmore, Johnson, & Petruck, 2003). Fifteen senses were identified corresponding to comprehensible “situations.” In the second stage, sufficient features were specified to be able to effectively distinguish between these senses. In the third stage, two psychological experiments were conducted to investigate the validity of the 15 senses. In a feature-rating task, participants were asked to rate the applicability of properties, such as “The victim is animate,” to the situations described by 45 sentences of the form “Y was attacked by X.” In a card-sorting task, a different group of participants was asked to freely sort the same materials. Multivariate analysis showed that the feature-rating task predicted both the corpus-based analysis and the card sorting by normal Japanese participants, indicating that the proposed method is sufficiently powerful to investigate the conceptual structure of sentence meaning.

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The purpose of this study is to investigate whether gender differences between pairs of eyewitnesses influence their collaborative recall. Using the MORI technique (Mori, 2003), two different images can be presented on a single screen and viewed separately by two groups of participants through polarizing filters, so that they are unaware of actually viewing two different overlapping images. The participants in this study were 48 undergraduates, assigned to one of three groups: a) eight male pairs, b) eight female pairs, and c) eight mixed-gender pairs. Wearing polarizing sunglasses, the members of each pairing observed two slightly different versions of an event projected on the same screen. The participants were asked initially to report individually on what they had observed (pre-discussion report), and then to discuss the event with the other member of the pairing and make a consensus report (post-discussion report). After one week, the participants were again asked to report individually on their recollections for the event (week-later report). The results indicated that memory performance for female pairs improved significantly in the post-discussion and the week-later reports. An increase in memory performance for male pairs was only found in the post-discussion report. However, no significant improvements in memory scores for the mixed-gender pairs were observed in any of their reports.

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The relationship between cognitive style (verbalizer-visualizer) and individual differences in the frequency of making gestures was investigated. Undergraduate students (35 pairs) participated in an experiment in which they explained a story that they had previously seen to each other under both face-to-face and not face-to-face conditions. Then, they responded to the Verbalizer-Visualizer Questionnaire (VVQ). The explanation sessions were videotaped and beat gestures and representational gestures were counted. The results indicated that while high-VVQ speakers more frequently produced representational gestures in the face-to-face condition than in the non-face-to-face condition, low-VVQ speakers made representational gestures at similar frequencies in both conditions. Neither cognitive style nor the experimental conditions influenced the frequency of beat gestures. It is suggested that the personality factors that increase the frequency of representational gestures are situational dependent (i.e., face-to-face or not face-to-face).

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This study examines the process underlying multi-digit number judgments. Participants were required to judge which number was the larger from pairs of numbers consisting of two-, three-, or four-digits. In Experiments 1 and 2, the compatibility of the digits in the second, third, or fourth position was manipulated. Analyses carried out for number pairs with different digits in the first position indicated that there was a significant compatibility effect for the second position, but not for the third and fourth positions. In Experiment 3, dummy trials where the number pairs had the same digit in the first position were excluded, and the participants were instructed to make judgments based only on the digit in the first position. The observed compatibility effect for the second position was smaller than that found in Experiment 1. These results suggest that parallel processing of reference digits is limited to the first two positions, and that knowing in advance whether the second-position digit is important for judgments influences the processing of the second-position digit.

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The mere exposure effect, where repeated exposure to a given object increases one's liking of it, has been well-known for decades. This article argues that the effect is an implicit memory phenomenon. It is clearly dissociated from explicit memory in a number of ways, such as experimental variables, participant variables, and stochastic independence. However, there also appear to be some differences between this effect and direct priming effects. Some of the controversies surrounding the mere exposure effect (such as the validity of perceptual fluency/attributional models, the relation to classical conditioning, structural evaluations of the mere exposure effect, and individual differences) are reviewed and directions for future research are discussed.

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This study investigates whether free recall immediately after the witnessed event prevents source misattribution. One half of 60 participants watched an emotionally-stressful videotaped movie, while the other half watched an emotionally-neutral one. Immediately after viewing the movies, the participants performed free recall concerning the contents of the movies. Then, they answered a questionnaire, which included misinformation about details of the movies. After two days, the participants undertook a source monitoring test, which required them to select the source of particular details; whether presented in the movie itself, in the questionnaire, in both, or in neither. The results indicated that immediate free recall reduced the incidence of source misattribution, and that this reduction was greater in the emotional condition than in the neutral condition, particularly for details relating to the gist of the movies. These results suggest that free recall immediately after the witnessed event makes the memories of the witnessed event more robust, especially for details related to impressionistic aspects of the event.

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