When a representation of an adjective-noun phrase is formed, the schema associated with the adjective is combined with the schema for the noun. For example, in forming a representation for a typical noun phrase like “red apple”, the schema for “red” only needs to overwrite the default value of red in the color slot of the “apple” schema. In contrast, when forming a representation for an atypical noun phrase like “brown apple”, the schema for “brown” has to replace the default value of red. If these hypotheses are correct, comprehension times for atypical noun phrases should be longer compared to times for typical noun phrases, assuming that the value-replacement process requires more time. Moreover, because the representation of a typical noun phrase can be assumed to be closer to that of the noun alone (“apple”), we may predict that, in a noun-phrase memorization task, more nouns would be recalled without the modifying adjective in the case of typical noun phrases compared to atypical noun phrases. The results from two experiments are consistent with these predictions, and thus support our hypotheses.

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The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between conflict and the inhibition of automatic response activation. Fourteen participants selectively responded to the ink color of word stimuli (‘left’ and ‘right’). Task-irrelevant features of the stimuli (presentation location and word meaning) were either congruent or incongruent with the response location. Three stimulus conditions differed in terms of their degree of conflict: in the non-conflict condition, both task-irrelevant features were congruent with response location; in the low-conflict condition, word meaning conflicted with response location; and in the high-conflict condition, both word meaning and presentation location conflicted with response location. In the non-conflict condition with facilitation due to automatic correct response activation, reaction times increased as the level of conflict increased in the preceding trial. In the high-conflict condition with automatic error response activation, error rates were lower as the level of conflict increased in the preceding trial. These results indicate that the process of conflict monitoring modulates inhibition due to automatic response activation according to the degree of conflict.

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The function of selective attention for emotional and non-emotional information in schizophrenic patients is examined with the Stroop task and an emotional Stroop task. In the Stroop task, no significant differences in response times were observed between the incongruent and neutral conditions with schizophrenic patients, although the difference in error rates for the incongruent and neutral conditions was larger for schizophrenic patients than for the control group. These results suggest that for schizophrenic patients the suppression function for irrelevant information is lower and that it is difficult to maintain task demands.
In the emotional Stroop task, response times and error rates did not differ across word conditions. This suggests that the cognitive functional difficulties of schizophrenic patients for emotional information is due to reduced processing for emotional information rather than an attentional bias for emotional information.

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Previous studies have shown that distinctive faces are remembered more easily. However, there are two problems with such studies. Firstly, definitions of distinctiveness have been ambiguous. Second, the presence of peculiar features and facial distinctiveness are not mutually independent factors. Two experiments are conducted to investigate how the distinctiveness of a studied face influences memory for faces. Participants studied a target image and then selected one image from several candidates that varied in terms of their level of distinctiveness. The initial distinctiveness of the target image was manipulated across three levels (high, original, and low). The two experiments differed in terms of the difficulty level and the delay time. The results of the experiments indicated that when the target were of high distinctiveness, participants selected face images that were more exaggerated, although they selected images that were close to the original level of distinctiveness in the other conditions. These results suggest that facial distinctiveness tends to be exaggerated in memory when the face is highly distinctive, and that facial distinctiveness facilitates the recognition of faces.

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This study examines whether visuospatial processing and working memory retention can function independently, without sharing a common resource, in a task requiring successive interaction between integrative processing and retention for integrated images. In Experiment 1, participants were given visuospatial and verbal processing tasks as interference tasks while working either to integrate serially presented stimuli (processing and storage interference condition) or to retain integrated images (storage-only interference condition). While the visuospatial processing task produced equal levels of interference in both conditions, the verbal processing task had no interfering effect, which suggests that integrative processing and temporary memory share a common resource. However, it is possible that the task was too difficult to produce a significant difference in performance under the two conditions. In order to examine this, the level of difficulty in the visuospatial processing task was reduced in Experiment 2. Consequently, performance in the storage-only interference condition improved, although it was lower than performance in the no-interference task control condition. The visuospatial processing task had an interference effect on temporary memory, which indicates that a single resource is involved in both integrative processing and memory storage.

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This study examines the effects of thought suppression on sequence memory. Participants watched a film and were then randomly assigned to thought-suppression, arithmetic, and no-instruction groups. After ten minutes, memory for the film was tested. The results from sequence memory tasks indicated that while performance in the thought-suppression group was lower than the two other groups for a scene ordering task, there were no significant performance differences among the three groups in a free recall task. In order to resolve the discrepancy in these results, future research is needed to investigate whether thought-suppression influences sequence memory for a film.

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The study examines whether A-prime is appropriate as an index of subjectively assessing imagery vividness. Half of the sixteen items in the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) were used to generate visual images in a drawing-action condition with eyes closed, and the other half in an eye-movement condition with eyes opened. While the first condition enhanced the vividness of images, the latter reduced it. A-primes were computed on the assumption that vividness ratings of 1 (perfectly clear and as vivid as normal vision) and 2 (clear and reasonably vivid) can be regarded as a ‘hit' in the first condition and a ‘false alarm' in the second condition. A-prime predicted memory performance more accurately than the total VVIQ score. This result indicates that the new measure of A-prime has greater sensitivity in assessing imagery ability than the conventional measure of the total VVIQ score. Furthermore, A-prime did not correlate with the total score for the Mental Rotation Test, which is supposed to measure the inner scribe function that is responsible for image generation in visuo-spatial working memory. This result implies that imagery assessment and image generation are mutually independent.

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The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of gesturing on the performance of a novel spatial task. Forty participants (graduate and undergraduate students) took part in experiments involving a disk image moving task. The results indicated that (1) the group required to keep their arms folded during the first part of the experiment but not during the second part made more mistakes during the first part than during the second part; (2) the group required to keep their arms folded during the second part but not during the first part made the same number of mistakes during both parts; and (3) these effects were observed not only in females, but also in males who tended to make fewer gestures for the task. These results are interpreted as indicating that folding arms inhibits not only gesturing but also body movement, and that body movement affects performance for the novel spatial task.

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We investigated whether selective attention towards threat-related stimuli in social anxiety was associated with the difficulty of disengagement from the stimuli. Participants were divided into two groups: high social anxiety and low social anxiety. They kept their eyes focused on a center prime stimulus (social threat, neutral word, or symbol), which was presented for either 100 ms or 800 ms. The target stimulus was then presented to either the left or the right of the prime stimuli, and the participants judged the location of the target stimulus. The results indicate that, in contrast to low socially anxious students, high socially anxious students took longer to make decisions for socially-threatening words presented for 800 ms, and that their response latencies were also slower for socially-threatening words than for neutral words and symbol. However, no significant differences were observed in reaction times between the high and low socially anxious students when the prime stimuli were presented for 100 ms. These findings suggest that individuals with high social anxiety have difficulty in disengaging their visual attention from socially-threatening words when presented for longer periods.

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In Japan, there have been many cases in which an innocent suspect falsely confesses to a crime under interrogation. False confessions are most typically coerced-compliant in nature. The interrogators question an innocent suspect and often seek to obtain a confession when, despite the lack of evidence, they are confident that the suspect committed the crime. In such a situation, the innocent suspect is under incredibly strong pressure, having been arrested, separated from familiar people, and held under total police control. During questioning, the suspect is often treated unjustly and with contempt, with interrogators refusing to listen to the suspect's accounts of events. Accordingly, the suspect will feel desperately helpless and can lose their sense of perspective just wanting an end to the suffering under the severe interrogation in custody. It should be noted that the prospect of some future punishment as a consequence of a guilty verdict is not sufficient to prevent false confessions. Under such agonizing circumstances, an innocent suspect will not be able to make rational comparisons between their present suffering and some vague future punishment, and will not perceive the possible punishment as something that can become a reality. Thus, the suspect may finally succumb to the pressure to make a false confession. The psychology of false confessions can only be understood from the perspective of the suspect themselves within the turmoil of the criminal interrogation. This study proposes the notion of “psychology of being in turmoil,” and argues that our task we must be to tackle this.

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