This study examines street-walking training sessions by orientation and mobility spe-
cialists for people who are visually impaired. We determine the professional methods
used by orientation and mobility specialists to support the spatial perception of people
who are visually impaired. Based on the above, when we study the street-walking of
people who are visually impaired, we argue the important viewpoint that in this case,
walking should be considered “a social action.” We videotape street-walking training
sessions and describe the ethno-methods of orientation and mobility specialists. Results
indicate that when orientation and mobility specialists describe the surrounding envi-
ronment, they highlight spatial arrangements with regard to the boundaries of objects
in the street.Through touching and hearing, these objects ’intelligibility is achieved by
linking the orientation and mobility specialist’s description of the environment and the
spatial perception of the person who is visually impaired. These results suggest walking
in the street is a social action, which is related to various configurations of common
sense. This research is important to advancing studies on the “order of perception.”

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How do expert storytelling artists captivate audiences with a single performance? In
study 1, we observed the eyeblink responses of expertized 7 of 20 audience members
(10 male and 10 female, aged 16 to 67 years; M =40.6, SD =16.4) at the performance
of two professional story-telling Rakugo artists. With using a surrogate data method,
the statistically significant synchronization of eyeblinks among audience members was
detected when performers changed scenes and characters and immediately after the
performer delivered words essential to the understanding of the story. In study 2, we
conducted a laboratory experiment with 32 (19 male and 13 female) participants aged
20 to 34 years (M =22.56, SD =2.85) to examine whether the expertise of the story-
teller affected the frequency and intensity of synchronization of eyeblinks by recording
each participant’s eyeblinks. The synchronization of eyeblinks was also detected in this
study that each participant viewed videotapes alone, which eliminated potential au-
dience interaction. The participants who were assigned to the watching a videotaped
performance of an expert storyteller displayed frequent synchronized eyeblinks and had
a higher score of transportation into the narrative world of Rakugo compared to those
were assigned to watch a videotaped performance of a novice. These results imply
that expert performers gain a listener’s unintentional process of attention as well as
somatic-emotional responses, evidenced by synchronized eyeblinks.

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Empathic responding is divided into the following two types: parallel and reactive.
In the framework of a dual-process theory, our hypothesis is that parallel responding
depends on system 1, which operates fast, automatically, and unconsciously, and that
reactive responding is controlled by system 2, which operates slowly but serves as the
basis of rationality. We investigated the hypothesis by means of manipulating the load
of working memory which was an essential element for system 2. Participants read
a story of an unhappy person with a memory task, in which they were required to
memorize underlined words and recall them after reading it, and then answered the
parallel and reactive responding scales. As a result, high working memory load, in
which condition participants were required to memorize more words, led to lower re-
active responding than low working memory load, but the difference was not shown in
parallel responding. This result affirms our hypothesis.

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This paper reviews the birth, growth and future issues in learning sciences, an ever-
growing discipline of human learning research. In the former part of this paper, we trace
three groups of researchers who dealt with learning in real classrooms based on their
own cognitive studies in 1970s through 1980s. Their trajectories demonstrate the learn-
ing sciences as a natural outgrowth of cognitive science as well as a good test field of
learning in reality. In the latter part, we discuss current moves of the learning sciences,
and identify three issues: (1) how to change and realize our visions of “learning goals,”
(2) how to use technology in order to keep records of learning, and (3) how to help
everybody make the new version of “learning sciences” as a core common science of all.
As an example to deal with the issues simultaneously, we introduce teacher-researcher-
government partnerships that create knowledge constructive classrooms, from which
every participant can learn to revise her or his vision of goals and learning.

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