To assess educational effect in an adult students' course, three experiments were conducted with a rigid questionnaire related in job performance in which adult students participated in an educational course and their bosses evaluated the adult students' job performance before and after the course (before one week and after one and four weeks). The task of the first group (students and their bosses) in Experiment 1 was to enumerate criteria for evaluation of job performance, and 12 items were selected. In Experiment 2, the second group rated importance of the 12 items in evaluation of job performance, and the results revealed no difference in the rank order rating between the adult students and the bosses. The third group in Experiment 3-1 evaluated the adult student's job performance three times (before one week, and after one and four weeks). The second task in Experiment 3-2 was identical to Experiment 3-1 except that there were no classes. The results in Experiment 3-1 indicated significantly the time lag effect with a specific job-related item that the adult students evaluated advancement of job performance after one week, while their bosses evaluated subordinate's advancement after four weeks. In contrast, the time lag effect was not observed in Experiment 3-2. It is concluded that the evaluation based on the adult students' job performance revealed differences between the adult students and their bosses. These results suggest that self-evaluation in the adult students and others-evaluation in their bosses differ according to confirmatory data sampling and processing.

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In daily interaction with others, we can behave cooperatively by estimating the intention of others and predicting their behavior. It is important to understand the mechanism of such smooth cooperative behavior for both comprehending human social cognitive ability and designing social artifacts that can interact with humans. To clarify effective functions that constitute the mechanism, we constructed a computational model of cooperative behavior in which an action decision process is dynamically controlled based on an estimation of intention of other. The model estimates the other's intention from his⁄her behavior by reusing the knowledge of one's own action decisions. However, in a condition in which agents mutually estimate the intentions of others, the cooperation performance is unsatisfactory. We addressed the problem by introducing “level” of estimation. Our model combines three types of action decision strategies: an action strategy based on the estimation of other's intention, one based on the estimation of one's own intention by other, and an action strategy that doesn't use the intention of other. To analyze the model, we simulated tasks in which two hunters cooperatively chased two preys and demonstrated that this model achieved smooth cooperation. The result suggests the effectiveness of our model.

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This study investigated effects of sentence-final particle “no$rdquo; on sentence memory in order to clarify whether the non-referential function of “no$rdquo; could trigger fortuitous interaction in discourse. Sentence-final particle “no$rdquo; has two basic functions in terms of a local chain of communication. One is to imply a message sender's vague commitment to the utterance. The other is to imply awaiting the receiver's involvement in the unsettlement. Based on psychological studies on memory, it was predicted that the both functions of “no$rdquo; would promote memory by awaking receivers' attention in comparison with declarative sentences. In experiment 1 each of twenty simple sentences was visually presented one by one and read aloud in either declarative sentence or adding “no$rdquo; sentence. In experiment 2 a mixed list of ten declarative and ten adding “no$rdquo; sentences was visually presented one by one and read aloud. The results of the two experiments showed that the sentence-final “no$rdquo; sentences were significantly more memorized than the declarative ones. In experiment 3 sentence-final “yo$rdquo; was used in order to examine other sentence-final particle could influence on memory. The “yo$rdquo; implies a message sender's clear commitment to the utterance that specifies a new plot. The result showed that the “yo$rdquo; did not have any effect on memory.

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Incongruity theory holds a dominant position in explaining the mechanisms behind humor as a transient emotional reaction accompanied by laughing or smiling. However, there are two opposing models of this theory: the incongruity model and the incongruity-resolution model. This study looks at the differences in the role of the incongruity concept in each model and proposes an integrative model that clearly differentiates between structural incongruity as peculiarity and logical incongruity as the lack of causal relation between information. To test this integrative model, I manipulated these two different incongruities separately by changing the descriptions in the stimulus episodes. The results showed that each type of incongruity independently influenced the elicitation of humor. The possibility of confounding between the two factors was clearly negated by the results of the manipulation check and the general linear model analysis. These indicated the validity of the conceptualization of my integrative model, which can provide a unified theoretical framework for future humor studies.

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The present study investigated recognition of event type in the course of sentence comprehension by conducting three experiments on the processing of aspectual information in Japanese. The literature on theoretical syntax and semantics has reported that aspectual properties of verbs and modifying expressions play important roles in determining the event-type of sentences. Psycholinguistics literature on aspectual processing demonstrated that aspectual incompatibility between verbs and modifiers increases processing cost (Piñango, Zurif, & Jackendoff, 1999; Todorova, Straub, Badecker, & Frank, 2000). Since these studies examined processing cost for constructions with modifiers following verbs in head-initial languages like English, we first investigated if aspectual incompatibility increases processing cost in Japanese, a head-final language, wherein modifiers must precede verbs. Experiment 1 examined aspectual incompatibility between temporal adverbs and verbs. The result showed that aspectual incompatibility leads to a reading time slowdown. Second, we examined how grammatical aspect encoded by the aspect marker interacts with lexical aspect of verbs. The result of Experiment 2 showed that the combination of verbs and aspectual markers are processed simultaneously in determining the aspectual properties of sentences. Third, we examined whether aspectual information is processed incrementally, i.e. processed before verbs. The result of experiment using numeral quantifiers showed that aspectual incompatibility increased reading time even if the verb is not yet processed. Overall, this study showed that aspectual information is processed incrementally and yields strong prediction for aspectual properties of upcoming elements. Recognition of event-type can be achieved based on such aspectual information during the course of sentence comprehension.

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In this paper, the authors have implemented an experimental history utilization system which support to retrieve useful information for user's problem solving by inspecting the entire activity log on PC and reading the implication of the activity, and have shown the potential of various usage of history. That is the feature to handle the history of entire activity with keeping the bundle of activity, not to handle the daily problem solving partially. By using such exhaustive history, the users could use the relevancy in explicit way, And it become possible to utilize the history of past activity more than using information as is recorded. Actually, the authors have developed the experimental system to record the exhaustive history by screenshots and inspecting and reading that. As a result, although the users did not utilize the system as often as the authors expected, it became possible to utilize each information fragments that was not recorded explicitly in usual way and the relevancy of them by reading the activity bundle. It was also shown that the potential of extracting and utilizing the information of past activity that was not recorded explicitly from the current point of view. And in the experiment process, the potency of obtaining useful knowledge by sharing the entire activity with others have been indicated.

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This article discusses the present special issue on “Classroom Education and Cognitive Science” presented in the Cognitive Studies Journal in September 2009, and also answers questions about the workshop related to the special issue held in September 2009. We have created a special needs education program using E-Learning for students experiencing learning difficulties in regular classrooms. Therefore, we discuss three kinds of issues from the viewpoint of the special needs education. First, we discussed the advantage of practical research in classroom education. It is important that researchers go to the school and give the experimental class directly. Second, we focus on the application of practical research in special needs education. Practical research can contribute greatly to special needs education, thought it is seldom used in this application. We therefore discuss practical research currents being conducted. Finally, we focused on the utilization of technology in special needs education. We used an E-Learning system in our previous researches concerning children with developmental disabilities. Here we focus on the possibilities of new technology which can support learning in special needs education.

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