The present study examines whether mental imagery could induce light and dark adaptations. The participants discriminated differences in brightness between an achromatic standard stimulus and multiple comparison stimuli under a control condition in the first experiment. In imagery conditions, the participants performed the same task with images generated based on previously presented achromatic cues; one was darker than the standard stimulus, while another was brighter. With the generated darker image, the participants could discriminate smaller differences in brightness than under the control condition. However, the participants needed greater differences in order to be able to discriminate between the standard stimulus and multiple comparison stimuli with the generated brighter images. The second experiment indicates that observing a cue stimulus without an intention to create a mental image does not induce such effects. These results suggest that darker and brighter images induced dark and light adaptations, respectively. In the first experiment, the participants observed the cue stimuli with one eye and performed the discrimination task with the other eye. The procedure suggests that imagery induced adaptation is not at the peripheral level (e.g., the retina), but at the central level of visual processing.

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The intention superiority effect (ISE) refers to the phenomenon where intention-related materials have proven to be more accessible compared to other types of to-be-remembered materials. Three experiments were conducted to determine whether the ISE is related to the encoding of activities or to the instruction to perform the activities. In these experiments, the participants performed a simple action script or observed the experimenter perform a script. After memorizing two scripts, the participants were instructed as to which script they were to perform or observe. In a subsequent lexical decision task, reaction times for the words from the to-be-performed or to-be-observed scripts were compared with those for the words from neutral scripts. In Experiment 1, after memorizing two scripts with a perform intention, the participants were instructed to perform one of the scripts. In Experiment 2, after memorizing two scripts with a perform intention, the participants were instructed to observe one of the scripts. In Experiment 3, after memorizing two scripts with an observe intention, the participants were instructed to perform one of the scripts. The ISE was detected in Experiments 1 and 3 but not in Experiment 2. These results suggest that the ISE is related to the instructions to perform a script.

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This study investigates whether the directed forgetting effect would be eliminated when the to-be-forgotten word list is semantically related to the to-be-remembered word list. In Experiment 1, in order to ensure the validity of the study lists used in Experiment 2, all the participants studied List 1 and List 2 which both consisted of 15 unrelated words. After learning List 1, half of the participants received the forget instruction telling them to forget List 1. The other half of the participants received the remember instruction telling them to remember List 1 and List 2. After the study session, all participants completed a recall task. The results indicated the directed forgetting effect, where the forget-group participants recalled fewer List 1 words compared to the remember-group participants. In Experiment 2, using the study lists employed in Experiment 1, List 1 and List 2 were semantically related to each other, and these lists consisted words from 15 categories. The results indicated that the directed forgetting effect was eliminated. Thus, this study demonstrates that it is difficult to forget information which is related to information that is to-be-remembered.

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The effect of environmental context on performance for the word fragment task is investigated by changing the stimulus presentation modality. In an encoding session, 40 to-be-remembered items were either visually or auditory presented to 48 participants. After 10 minutes, participants engaged in a visual word fragment task in either the same room as the encoding session or in a different room. Reinstatement of the environmental context facilitated performance for the word fragment task in the different presentation modality condition. However, in the same presentation modality condition, reinstatement of the environmental context did not affect performance. This result suggests that when the effects of item cues, such as word fragments, are reduced by changing the presentation modality between the encoding and test sessions, environmental context cues also facilitate performance in the word fragment task.

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The purpose of this study is to examine the asymmetric interference between facial expression recognition and identity recognition using a selective attention task (Garner paradigm). In Experiment 1, the participants judged either the expression or the identity of faces while the irrelevant dimension of identity or expression was either held constant or varied. Reaction times (RTs) for identity judgments were not influenced by the expression variations; however RTs for expression judgments were affected by the identity variations, independently of effects for facial distinctiveness and participant gender. Experiment 2 examines whether this asymmetric interference might be related to differences in the relative difficulties of making expression and identity judgments. The participants judged either the expression or the identity of morphing facial stimuli where the identity was more difficult to judge than the expression. The results of Experiment 2 indicated that RTs for expression judgments were not affected by the identity variations, and that RTs for identity judgments were also unaffected by the expression variations. These results suggest that differences in relative difficulty cannot account for the asymmetric interference between expression recognition and identity recognition.

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This study examines the relationship between implicit gender-stereotyped knowledge (female-dependence) and the construct accessibility effect on person judgment. Thirty-six male and 36 female undergraduates participated in two ostensibly unrelated tasks. First, the participants were exposed to stimuli related to either neutral or dependent personality traits in a vigilance task. Second, the participants read a story about either a male or a female target and evaluated their impressions about the target. In addition, the participants undertook the Implicit Association Test (IAT), which measures the strength of implicit associations. The results indicate that the participants had an implicit gender-stereotyped association between females and dependence. Consistent with that association, the participants who were exposed to dependent stimuli judged the female target, but not the male target, as more dependent than did the participants who were exposed to the neutral stimuli. Moreover, there was a positive correlation between the ratings of dependence for the target person and the strength of the implicit association. These results suggested that implicit associations are closely related to the effect of previous exposure to primes on person judgments.

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