An empirical investigation was conducted on the characteristics of language use in graphics communication settings. Graphics communications, such as dialogues using maps, drawings, or pictures, provide people with two independent systems of representation, spoken language and graphics. Drawing on our dialogue data, we show that the presence of a graphical representation significantly changes the way the spoken language is used, extending its expressive capacity in most cases. As two remarkable uses of language affected in this way, we report the phenomena of mediated reference and dual description, illustrating them with actual examples from our data. Further, a quantitative analysis of our data shows that these special uses of language are indeed as common as conventional uses of language in the presence of graphical representations.

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Using a similar method to the MORI technique (Kanematsu, Mori, & Mori, 1996), we investigated effects of discussing and making a unified report by a pair of participants who were auditorily presented with partly-different stories without noticing that the stories were different. Twenty pairs of participants listened to 5 minutes stories simultaneously via headphones. The stories were taken from a TV detective drama, and the two stories were almost the same except for the motive of the crime about 40 seconds long. After listening to the stories, they were asked to recall them individually. Then they discussed the stories, and half of the pairs were asked to make a unified report (collaborative condition), and the other half of them to make reports individually (control condition). Finally, they were required to recall the stories individually a week later. The results showed that the participants in the collaborative condition recalled stories which were not actually presented more often than those in the control condition a week later, without noticing that they did not in fact listened to them. Effects of discussing and of making a unified report upon memory were discussed.

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The present paper discusses the creative design process using the conceptual combination task. As factors involved in the creative design process, we focused on the number of concepts associated with the concepts presented in the task and the use of action concepts during design process. In the experiment, the number of associated concepts was manipulated by using the electronic concept dictionary that was constructed by a large-scale association experiment. The protocols data obtained in the experiment were analyzed by automatic methods using the dictionary. As a result, (1) design products were highly evaluated when they were produced through combinations of two concepts that have a large number of associated concepts, and (2) the participants used many action concepts associated with the presented two concepts when the presented concepts had a large number of associated concepts. These results indicate effectiveness of analyzing associations for exploring design creativity.

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In this paper, I demonstrated that there must be enough working memory capacity for Japanese children to correctly comprehend case-markers. Case-markers represent the relationship between a noun and the predicate, and this relationship cannot be determined until the predicate is given. In other words, if the predicate is not realized, case-markers are retained as phonetic strings. It is generally considered that phonetic strings are retained in the working memory, and the accuracy of the retained information depends on the working memory's capacity. We predict that children's ability to retain the phonetic strings of case-markers is dependent on their working memory capacity, and hypothesize that children with insufficient memory capacity cannot utilize case-markers to interpret a sentence due to the inability to retain the phonetic strings accurately. We conducted a listening span test to assess the working memory capacity, and a picture selection task to examine children's interpretation of a sentence. In the latter test, we used scrambled sentences of the [NP-o NP-ga V] form to test the children's comprehension of a sentence with case-markers. To examine whether retaining case-markers as phonetic strings in the working memory imposes a significant load on comprehending scrambled sentences, we employed two types of scrambled sentences with the accusative and nominative markers dropped respectively in each type. If the retention of the case-markers' phonetic string is a crucial factor, it is predicted that children can comprehend these dropped patterns correctly. The results show that the above holds for children in the high memory span group, and support the claim that there must be sufficient working memory capacity in order to comprehend case-markers correctly.

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In this study, authors participated in the process of re-designing an information system for civil activities. From viewpoint of Actor Network Theory, they mainly pointed out two findings.
Firstly, designing an information system inevitably includes (re-)designing related social organization and activity itself. Therefore the requirement engineering approach has its limitations, for it implicitly assumes that activities and social organization are out there independently from information systems, user requirements already exist, and they can be obtained out with various methods.
Secondly, the subject of the information system design should not be regarded as an isolated individual or a team. It is a fluid network including artifacts and people with various interests. Moreover, these actors sometimes participate in, and withdraw from, the project.
A new approach, the network-oriented approach, is required to make a useful information system, which will not cause serious breakdown.

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This paper proposes a computational model of the practical cognitive processes involved in insightful human problem solving. The solutions to insight problems require a drastic shift from an ‘impasse’ stage to the ‘insight’ stage. The impasse stage frequently experienced with insight problems is generally assumed to reflect special ‘constraints’ on the solver. It is also generally assumed that three mechanisms are necessary in order to escape from impasses: a mechanism to avoid failed trials, a chaotic mechanism, and a goal-orienting mechanism. The proposed model involves a system of simultaneous differential equations with each variable denoting a node in a neural network model. Constraints are modeled in terms of controls on the easiness with which the nodes are activated. The system has two special terms; one is a chaotic function representing the chaotic mechanism, and the second guides the system in the direction that maximizes an evaluation function value in representing the avoidance of failed trials. Through the representation of the goal-orienting mechanism, the model selects an operator that minimizes the difference between the current state and the goal state. Simulation results demonstrate that the model successfully models the cognitive processes of insightful problem solving, and provide evidence that all three mechanisms necessary for insight.

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Previous studies (Cosmides, 1989, Cosmides & Tooby, 1989) have shown the Cheater Detection Module (CDM) to be an adaptive heuristic within social environments, and how it can improve human reasoning in many social exchange contexts. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of the CDM on problem solving. To that aim, the ‘30 dollar room’ problem (Isaak & Just, 1992) is employed, which involves a social exchange context.
Generally speaking, we use heuristics to efficiently solve normal problems. However, this particular problem can be considered to be a typical insight problem. While heuristics can function effectively in practical contexts, they can be obstacles to solving insight problems (Knoblich, 1999; Hiraki & Suzuki, 1998). We hypothesize that the CDM will make it difficult to find the correct answer for this insight problem.
In order to investigate this hypothesis, we compare solution rates for the standard ‘30 dollar room’ problem with isomorphic problems that do not involve ‘social exchange’ contexts. The results indicate that the solution rates for the isomorphic problems were higher than for the standard version of the problem. The results are supportive of our hypothesis. The results indicate that there are situations in which the CDM, a cognitive system that has emerged in adaptation to social environments, has a negative influence as a cognitive constraint.

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This study seeks to demystify one of a niche subculture of extreme female fans and mavens known as “Fujoshi” who get really into animation, comic, novel and so on. They call themselves self-mocking term “Fujoshi” and are willing to draw⁄read fanzines that are an underground hobby focused on romantic or homosexual relationships between male characters from various media texts. In this paper, I describe how they construct their identities and social relations through narrative and practice. First I frame this work as an effort to think the differentiation between “self” and &ldquoidentity”. Then I show the core characteristic of “Fujoshi” groups is the issue of hiding identity. The assumption has been in subcultural studies that the embodied external identity display in the face of mainstream culture is foundational. But “Fujoshi” culture does it differently. Although they make their identities invisible in everyday lives, that hiding practice paradoxically makes their identities visible in “Fujoshi” community. The other area that I found interesting was their ironical communication. Because they believe that “Fujoshi” activities are considered to be inferior to the &ldquonormal” females, they express their identities self-deprecatingly. I think this practice is a defensive communication against prejudice and is also a strategy to present their identities paradoxically.

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