Mirror Visual Feedback (MVF) with a mirror box and Virtual Reality based MVF
(VR-MVF) are known as one of several therapies within a rehabilitation for improve-
ment of motor function after stroke and pain control. Our paper focuses on cognitive
functions of temporal consistency between prediction with motor imagery and visual in-
formation related to motor movements in using MVF and VR-MVF because of common
features of the both MVFs. Healthy participants tried completing an experimental task
to synchronize prediction of visual change of motor movements with motor imagery and
visual information about motor movements in a virtual environment resembling VR-
MVF. In the experimental tasks, visual information was provided in two conditions
which are temporal delayed and not delayed. We evaluated that success and failure of
twelve trials in experimental tasks, cortical activations measured with functional Mag-
netic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and subjective experience collected by questionnaire
during performing the experimental tasks. The participants could complete the consis-
tency prediction of visual change and visual information in motor movements on the
virtual environment. We found that prediction error is perceived when the prediction of
visual change in motor movement is not consistent with visual information about mo-
tor movement, and there are interindividual variability in the task completion related
to the consistency. This suggests temporal consistency between prediction with motor
imagery and visual information related to motor movement may be able to contribute
motor learning on VR-MVF.

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In skill acquisition for periodic body movements such as cascade juggling, establish-
ment of stable body movements seems crucial. However, we have a further question:
do all jugglers acquire such common skills through standard developmental processes?
Consequently, we mainly investigated development of three types of stabilities: the
stability of chest movement representing torso movement, the stability of wrist move-
ment representing arm swing, and the stability of time interval representing swinging
rhythm. In addition, we also investigated participants’verbal reports on their inten-
tional concerns for achieving optimum learning during practice. In the experiment,
novices practiced three-ball cascade juggling over a period of one week. The findings
revealed that two of the five intermediate level jugglers who performed over 100 suc-
cessive catches established individually unique body movements. Results also revealed
the possibility that such specific body movements related to their intentional focuses
during practice.

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This study constituted action research that nurses and researchers tried to change
a training system for novice nurses by building a community of dialogue that went
beyond existing frameworks. First, we interviewed the administrator, clinical educa-
tor, and preceptor who were concerned with newcomer education and the design of
the training system, and we analyzed the differences or gaps among their perspectives.
Second, we planned and tried a cross-boundary method whereby the nurses exchanged
knowledge and created a new training system for newcomers, negotiating the bound-
aries among wards or between researchers and hospital staff. The micro-process of
creating new knowledge through dialogue was examined using discourse analysis and
activity theory. The results were as follows: new knowledge was generated; and the
training system became multilateral. This was achieved through a process of continu-
ous context transformation: from past-oriented interviews to a context on the border
between past-oriented and future-oriented activity, then to a context of making con-
tradictions visible, and so on. In this process, a ‘nonsense proposal’by the researcher
(facilitator), one that nurses had laughed at and denied, also emerged as a springboard
for new, important knowledge. The discussion also describes what was created, and its
associated or conflicted heterogeneous historicity. This is discussed from the viewpoint
of concepts of zone of time perspectives (ZTP) and inter-historicity.

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Human behavior under risky or dangerous situations is considered somewhat irra-
tional from the viewpoint of objective risks. Recent studies have shown that it is
innate in nature and had been acquired in the process of evolution. This means that
such behavior is adaptive and must have some kind of efficiency or advantage in natural
selection. This paper constructs a simulation model of the human evolution process and
tries to acquire risk related behavior of Agents. Agents, which simulate life histories of
humans, have shown risk accepting behavior over a large parameter space that specifies
the environmental condition in which the evolution takes place. The relation between
behavior under risky situations and life histories of organisms is also discussed.

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Previous experimental studies suggest that bilinguals’lexical access is language non
selective, and that L1 word frequency plays a role in L2 word recognition. The current
eye-tracking study investigated L1 frequency effects of lexical syntactic information
during reading. Chinese-Japanese bilinguals read L2-Japanese sentences containing
two types of cognate verbal nouns. Though these words were cognates, they differed
in the frequency with which they appeared as passives between Japanese and Chinese.
Stimuli items were all displayed in Japanese in either their active or passive voice form
for both the experimental (low frequency of L1-Chinese passive usage, e.g., 指示‘in-
struct’) and control (high frequency of L1-Chinese passive usage, e.g., 逮捕‘arrest’)
conditions. The frequencies in L2-Japanese were controlled to be equal for all items.
The results demonstrated that cognates with low frequency of L1-Chinese passive usage
induced longer L2-Japanese reading times during early and late stages of processing in
comparison to all other conditions. These cognates also displayed lower accuracy than
their active voice counterparts. In conclusion, this study revealed that besides the over-
all word frequency, the L1 frequency of syntactic information has substantial influence
on the processing of the target L2 language.

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Human judgment and decision making is influenced by artifacts as well as other
people. Human-robot communication in real life has been attracting attention and
robots have begun to be utilized as a human interlocutor in recent years. For instance,
Watanabe et al. (2015) reported that an android as a salesperson could influence human
preferences through a touch display conversation. In order to apply robots as inter-
locutors for human decision making, we need to understand how people are influenced
during interactions with robots. Thus, we investigated how semi-forced choices through
a touch display conversation with an android and human interlocutor influenced human
preferences based on cognitive dissonance theory. The results indicated that people are
more willing to accept a semi-forced choice with an android as an interlocutor rather
than with a human interlocutor.

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