The purpose of this paper is to investigate the cognitive load involved in searching hierarchical menus on a computer display by eyeblinks as an index. The participants were given the task of searching WWW pages created for the experimental purposes according to a predetermined order. Two experimental conditions were prepared. One condition required participants to self select a location to follow, while the other simply required the participants to click on the “NEXT” icon. The results indicate that there were no differences between the two conditions. Eyeblinks were suppressed, however, when menu items were selected and this was followed by a burst of eyeblink. This phenomenon would seem to be related to cognitive load. The eyeblinking indicates that there are cognitive loads involved in sequential searching of hierarchical menus.

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This study quantitatively examines the relationship between physical reactions and strong experiences when listening to music. First, five physical reactions that are frequently experienced (goose pimples, lump in the throat, shivers down the spine, tears and arousal) were selected as evaluation items for the main experiment based on questionnaire results. Through another pilot study, two musical excerpts were selected that produce distinct impressions. In the main experiment, 150 participants evaluated the strengths of their physical reactions and emotional experiences due to listening to music. The results indicate that there were significant high correlations between the ratings for all five physical reactions and ratings of strong experiences due to the music. These findings suggest that each physical reaction is highly related to strong experiences due to listening to music. Moreover, there were high correlation coefficients between the average ratings for these subjectively-measured physical reactions and ratings of strong experiences for both musical excerpts. The present findings suggest that a combination of these physical reactions is highly related to strong experiences when listening to music.

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The enactment effect refers to the phenomenon of better memory performance for action phrases, such as “lift a pen,” when the phrases are enacted than when not. The purpose of this study is to explore the boundary conditions for enactment effects working with the Japanese Sign Language (JSL). While motor program theory stresses the motor component of memory traces, the episodic integration view holds that associations between actions and objects are important. In order to examine how these theories can be applied to enactment effects with JSL, two JSL attributes were manipulated; namely, recallability (how easily one can reproduce an action) and imaginability (how easily one can form an image from the JSL). In Experiment 1, the participants studied four types of JSL words (high-R+high-I, high-R+low-I, low-R+high-I, and low-R+low-I) either by enacting the actions, observing the actions, or only looking at the verbal match. No differences were observed between the different word types or study conditions in Experiment 1. However, in Experiment 2 where imaginability was maximized, an enactment effect was observed for high recallability words. The results are discussed in terms of the explanatory powers of the respective theories.

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Using the indirect recognition procedure (Terasawa & Ohta, 1993), this study examines whether people can retain random tone sequences for long periods through two group-experiments. The participants participated in two sessions, where the second session was a general recognition experiment consisting of preference judgment and recognition test phases. The effects of exposure to the sequences in the first session are examined based on recognition performance in the second session. The intervals between the sessions are 4 weeks (Experiment 1) and 14 weeks (Experiment 2). In each session, participants were required to rate their preference for each sequence. In the second session, after rating preferences, the participants were required to judge whether they had heard each of the sequences presented in the preference phase (indirect recognition test). The results show that the hits and false alarms for sequences presented in the first session were much higher than non-presented sequences. These results indicate that humans can retain auditory information, which is difficult to encode, for long periods. Possible educational applications are discussed.

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Capacity constraints and resource consumption for working memory are examined with the Mastermind number-guessing game, which is directly related to the consumption of working memory resources. In the experiment, the working memory levels of 28 college student participants were measured with a Japanese version of the reading span test (RST). The participants then played the two, three, and four-dimensional versions of Mastermind. Each version of the game involves a different problem space. The results indicated that the seven students with low working memory capacities (low-span readers) were more constrained than the seven students with high working memory capacities (high-span readers) when playing in the large basic problem space (the four-dimensional version). The basic problem-space effects and the possibility that working memory, as measured by the RST, influences the problem-solving process are discussed in terms of the domain-specific, domain-general and executive functions of working memory.

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The present study investigates whether the selection of test cases changes during hypothesis testing. In total, 75 participants solved one of two discovery tasks: the 2-4-6 task or the New Eleusis task. The participants were first presented with an initial instance produced by a particular rule and were asked to determine the rule. On each trial attempt, after the participants had formulated a hypothesis about the rule and proposed a new instance, they were provided with feedback about whether or not the instance fit the rule. The task would end when the participants announced that they were absolute confident in their best guess. The results indicate that the selection of alternative tests decreased in the latter phases, although the selection of negative and positive tests increased with time. In particular, successful problem solvers were much more likely to produce negative tests. These findings suggest that the process of hypothesis testing consists of at least two different phases.

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This study investigates the “Proust phenomenon”——the involuntary evoking of autobiographical memories due to odor cues—— with the diary method. Thirty participants were asked to record the contents of such memories and the circumstances surrounding their occurrence for a period of month. The results indicated that most of these memories were old, positive, emotional, specific in nature, and associated with stronger feeling of being brought back in time. Moreover, most of the odor cues were positive, of high emotional arousal, and easily named. Analyses of the circumstances suggest that it is unusual for the situational activities to serve as subsidiary cues. Furthermore, mood-congruent recall was observed. These findings suggest that the emotions aroused by odor cues can influence the occurrence of the Proust phenomenon.

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This study investigates now retrieval process difference in episode recall tasks influence mood congruent memory by employing the remember-know paradigm. Sixty undergraduate students participated in this experiment. The participants were randomly assigned to three types of mood-induced groups (positive, negative and neutral). Each condition was presented with stimulus words at 4 seconds. The stimuli were 30 pleasant and 30 unpleasant trait adjective words. In the study phase, a participant made “Remember”, “Know”, or “Not” judgment about whether a word was related to either their own autobiographical memory or episodes involving their mother. The recall results indicated that while there was a mood congruent memory effect on the recollection process, there was no effect on the familiarity process. These findings suggest that the recollection process for the episode recall task is important for the occurrence mood congruent memory.

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This study investigates the mood congruent effects of music on word recognition within the activity dimension of two-dimensional emotion space in order to verify whether exciting or relaxing music automatically arouse exciting or relaxing emotions. In the experiment, high-activity and low-activity personality trait words and non-words were presented on a display with music that was either high-active (exciting) or low-active (relaxing) in nature. Thirty “music group” participants and twelve “control group” participants were asked to judge whether presented character strings were high-activity trait words, low-activity trait words or non-words as quickly as possible. They were also asked to recall the words presented during the judgment task. Mood congruent effects were only observed in terms of response times when participants were presented with both high-activity trait words and high-activity music. This result suggests that music arouses emotional responses in the activity dimension.

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