The present study has investigated how mutual briefs about task executions are updated during collaborative tasks using the Japanese map task corpus. The results have shown that the current models describe only part of mutual brief updating processes, and that there exist other types of processes. According to the current models, a mutual belief is considered to be achieved when the instruction follower accepts instructions given by the instruction giver and gives some sign of actually completing the given task. However, the present study has shown that mutual beliefs could be achieved even when the follower neither follows the instruction nor gives any sign of completion. The analysis indicates that the conversations in map tasks do not necessarily require prior planning and conversations to obtain clear mutual briefs about the goals to achieve the way the current models expect. Rather, ambiguous mutual beliefs and somewhat independent actions, coupled with inference about mutual goals, are sufficient to achieve the map tasks. In order to explain these results, we have proposed more detailed mechanisms about how mutual beliefs update.

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 To act safely and adequately in the environment, we must accurately perceive the relationship between environmental properties and our own body properties. Over time, body properties change due to aging or motor dysfunction. There may also be changes in the short term due to artificial extensions or experimental manipulations. Previous studies have reported that people do not always successfully adapt after such changes as some dissociation between perception and action might have remained in some cases. It is unclear what conditions cause such dissociations to disappear and adaptation to occur. The present study attempted to apply a constructive approach to examine the dissociation between perception and action in stepping over an obstacle by means of loading on the non-dominant leg to change body properties of healthy young participants. The loaded positions of the leg (ankle and thigh) were also manipulated to investigate the different effects on the dissociation. The results demonstrated that participants tend to underestimate their action abilities in the ankle condition and overestimate their abilities in the thigh condition. As a result, the different effects between the loaded positions on the dissociation were found. These findings are discussed in terms of the complex relation between the loaded positions, exploratory action after body properties were altered, and the action required as an experimental task.

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 We feel as if we exist in a virtual reality (VR) world especially when our actions are directly projected on a Computer Graphics (CG) character in the VR world. Such feelings are said to be achieved by a sense of ownership for the CG characters. Previous research suggests that the synchronicity between somatosensory input and visual information are crucial to attain this sense of ownership. Although several studies have investigated the temporal synchronizations between actual and virtual actions, no study has assessed how the discrepancies in the correspondence between these actions affect the emergence of a sense of ownership. In the present study, we employed a “rock-paper-scissors” game task in a VR world in which the players’ actions (i.e., rock, paper, or scissors) were projected onto the actions of a CG character with zero (0%), low (33%), moderate (66%), or total (100%) correspondences. Total correspondence indicated complete synchronization between the actions of the player and the CG character, i.e., when the player produced one of the three actions (rock, paper, or scissors), the CG character produced the same action. In the zero correspondence condition, their actions did not coincide, i.e., when the player produced one of the three actions, the CG character strictly produced different actions. The results showed that a sense of agency in terms of the subjective reports increased as a function of the correspondences between the player’s and CG character’s actions. As a probe test, after each 100 trial, games of a correspondence condition were introduced, in which the CG character’s arm was suddenly almost cut by a Japanese sword. A survey after completion of the task revealed that the sense of agency increased as a function of the correspondences. This suggested that the synchronizations of the actions are crucial for attaining a sense of ownership, as well as increase the sense of agency. In contrast, the systolic blood pressure increased only after the total correspondence condition, and was higher than those observed in the other three correspondence conditions, suggesting that any subtle decrement in correspondence does not produce a sense of ownership, as assessed by the physiological indicator. In other words, there was a discrepancy between the psychological and physiological sense of ownership at the moderate contingency condition. A temporal de-synchronization may produce a sense of ownership; however, any decrement in the correspondence between actual and virtual actions is insufficient to evoke a sense of ownership.

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 Problems in the learning and identity development of nursing staff have been effectively captured by the theory of participation in communities of practice proposed by Lave and Wenger (1991). However, the changes in the identity of each nursing learner who lives multiple social contexts, and the process by which other non-nursing social contexts influence their identity have not been studied. In this study, interviews were conducted with 2 nursing students, 5 times a year during their clinical training. The changes in the identity of nursing students were examined by the positioning analysis (Davies & Harr´e, 1990; Harr´e & van Langenhove, 1999), where identity is regarded as the positioning of the self that is shown in an interview. Findings revealed that one student had changed her position as a member of a marginal group in the nursing school to a member of the group of nursing apprentices during clinical practice. Another student had positioned himself as a member of the nursing community since the beginning. However, there was a conflict in the positioning of nurse and student during clinical practice. Two changes were thought to be related to their current and past social contexts, namely their history of participation in communities of practice. Finally, with reference to the ethics of care in education, the relationship between the education and understanding of the learner’s history are discussed.

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 This study investigated false alarm effects against interacting with a person who had been indicted in an attempted murder case. Two hundred and forty participants were asked to read a fictional story about such a case. The degree of physical injury of the victim (i.e., minor or permanent damage) and the subsequent truth (i.e., the person was guilty or not) were manipulated. After reading the scenario, the participants were asked to rate their desire to avoid the indicted person and to estimate the risks of either gazing at him or having a conversation. Consistent with Error Management Theory (EMT), the strongest false alarm effect was obtained against having a conversation with a person who was actually guilty as well as when the physical injury of the victim was more severe. We also confirmed false alarm effects in some conditions where the indicted person was not guilty. These results indicate that the general tendency to avoid a person who possibly threatens one ’s safety, as suggested by EMT, could be applicable to situations of interaction with the former accused in a criminal case.

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 This paper describes the outline of research project “Cognitive Interaction Design,”which is conducted as Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas, and ex-plains what we emphasize in analyzing and modeling interaction processes. Especially we discusses the necessity of analyzing and modeling considering temporal elements in interaction such as contingency and mutual adaptation. And we introduce some exam-ples of research that conduct such analysis and modeling as well as discuss our future prospects.

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 “Sharing of information” is one of the fundamentals of any interaction among humans, and any interaction including other kinds of participants. This article presents a theory of interaction by information sharing, regarding an interaction as: a set of internal processes constituted by participants’ first-person inferences, with which each participant, as a goal-directed adaptive information processing system, tries to change its internal state to make it easier to realize the composite goal state constructed by the participant’s first-person inference on goal states of the self, the second persons, and the third persons. It appends related studies from developmental science and cognitive neuroscience, and from the research on human-robot interaction conducted in our laboratory as well.

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