As neuroscience has advanced, it increased expectation that unknown aspects of the mind could be explored by it. But it has its limit as analytical science and lacks models of cognitive processes as such that cognitive sciences has been exploring. Cognitive sciences have been pondering robots to clarify cognition of human beings as both of them have physical systems to interact with environments. Recently robotics researchers are actually trying to realize such robot with human-like cognitive system that can be a effective platform on which researchers from divers disciplines collaborate. As a longstanding multidisciplinary area of science, cognitive science can be contribute to create, through such collaboration, comprehensive understanding of human mind and its useful application to social system in the 21st century.

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Information technology (IT) is now mature enough to be applied to our societal systems. Altough IT has potential to change our life in a drastic manner, it is not recognized by many. Researchers on IT on the other hand have little interest in designing new societal systems. Even when they do, they lack knowledge of the real world and human. Collaboration with cognitive science as well as social science is called for.

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The competitiveness of Japan's semiconductor industry fell sharply in the latter half of the 1990s. This paper attempts to explore structural factors behind this by focusing particularly on production systems. In doing so, special attention is paid to the rapid increase in complexity of technologies and markets, a phenomenon brought about by the “self-propagating” evolution of information technologies of the semiconductor industry's own making. Such an increase in complexity calls for highly specialized knowledge⁄know-how. At the same time, it is necessary to create a mechanism for combining such knowledge⁄know-how so as to ensure its cumulative and agile generation in an integral form. Japan's semiconductor industry, however, has yet to create such a mechanism for its production system. This paper attempts to identify factors behind this and find clues toward solving the problem.

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Last a few decades a new trend of “cognitive approach”, which focuses on human and human group's cognitive behavior and dynamics of their interaction, has been emerging in social sciences, especially in organization and innovation studies. This study try to review how new theoretical fields, such as economics of information, economics of organization, new institutional theory of economics, organizational knowledge creation theory, knowledge transfer theory and cognitive coordination theory, has evolved. Based on the review, we abstract problems of such cognitive approaches and discuss possibilities of cognitive sciences' contribution to the problems.

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This article investigates the possibility of applying cognitive-science research outcomes for commercial purposes in a business-academia collaboration project supported by the industrialization office of the authors' university. The authors' research backgrounds are computational cognitive science and its applications; particularly in concerning ontology, cognitive and agent modeling. They hypothesize that their research outcomes can provide practical solutions to knowledge sharing and knowledge visualization problems. They investigate corporate human-resource management as an example, develop business process modeling framework using social agent simulator and also develop a human resource evaluation ontology. Applying them to simple recruitment interview cases, the authors analyze the applicability of the proposed solution. In conclusion, they discuss practical problems to be solved for their solution to spread.

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The purpose of this research is to examine whether the results of statistical analyses on the basis of a language corpus correspond with human beings' language knowledge or not. In order to examine the correspondence, a psychological experiment was conducted using results of statistical analysis of a language corpus as follows: Two participants groups were asked to answer words or metaphors given referring materials chosen from the results of statistical analysis of language corpus. In the association group, 18 participants were asked to associate words from materials.In the metaphor generation group, 20 participants were asked to generate “A like B” style metaphors.The result of the psychological experiment showed the correspondence of the results of statistical analysis of a language corpus with human beings' language knowledge.Furthermore, answers of association group were compared with metaphors of metaphor generation group using relative entropy, which indicates a diversity of connections between words and latent semantic classes.The result showed that metaphors generated by the metaphor generation group were connected with more latent semantic classes than words answered by the association group

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The purpose of this study is to propose and test a model that integrates the incongruity model and the incongruity-resolution model, both of which explain cognitive aspects of the humor process. In the former, the direct cause of humor is incongruity, that is, discrepancy between expectations and actual states, whereas in the latter, it is a resolution of incongruity. In other words, it is a problem solving activity to find a cognitive rule that removes incongruity. The author hypothesized that the direct cause of humor is not resolution but incongruity, and the process of resolution interrupts conscious experience of humor by occupying one's attention. In Experiment 1, subjects read four-frame comic strips while remembering six-digit, three-digit or no numbers. The results showed that the humor rating was lower in the six-figure condition, although no difference was detected in humor comprehension. This suggested that (a) immersion in cognitive activity interrupts the humor experience. In Experiment 2, four-frame comic strips were presented while parts were hidden that either had no relation to humor or included essential cue for resolution. Then the parts were presented after a 5 or 15 second delay. Participants were asked to predict what was hidden during the delay. The results showed that delay decreased humor rating not only in the former condition but also in the latter condition. The effect of delay in the former condition implied (b) temporariness of humor, which was evoked when the stimuli were presented, while in the latter condition it implied that (c) humor as an emotional state could be evoked without resolution. Though the results of the two experiments supported the hypotheses of the author's model, these hypotheses were not sufficiently verified due to methodological problems.

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We examined effects of repeated exposure of banner advertisement on measure of product's image such as knowledge of, liking for, and purchase intention for products. In Experiment 1, 24 participants were repeatedly presented banners of various trade names with different typicality. Then they were required to judge the trade names with respect to the level of typicality, liking, purchase intention, and recognition using 9-point scale. As results, higher typicality of trade names led to higher levels of recognition, liking, and purchase intention, including false recognitions. Those levels were not, however, likely to increase by repeated exposure. In Experiment 2, repetition frequency of exposure was increased and 79 participants were divided into three segments based on their present interests. The results showed that presenting banners with lower typicality particularly raised liking and purchase intention levels. We discuss the cognitive process that link typicality of trade name to liking and purchase intention.

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[in Japanese]

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