In recent years, we have witnessed cases of “gamification” in various social fields,such as education, social welfare, and even ecological problem solving. Within the background of such cases, there seems to be a need for change in the reality of our daily lives. In fact, we can see some cases of gamification occurring in our actual lives. According to Suits (2005), to play game is to engage in “the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.” In daily life, obstacles exist as things to avoid, but in a game context, such obstacles are necessary for our pleasure. Thus, using the method of gamification and introducing the game context, we can change the meaning of various obstacles, and construct alternative meaning to our reality. In this article, we focus on the process in which our reality is reconstructed through the conversation after playing a game-based educational program. Describing how they design their interactions and construct their realities, we aim at finding how games affect our realities. This field of research is RPG-based, and focuses on a user-education program implemented in an academic library, called “Libardry,” which is a combination of the word “library” and the title of a popular game, “Wizardry.” The program consists of two parts: an RPG-based education program and a group discussion (Flick, 2002). The participants were six university students, two females and four males. We focused on conversations in a group discussion and analyzed them to determine how the participants, staff members, and students, elicit meaning from difficulties when accessing library resources as artifacts. As a result, we determined how participants change their meaning collaboratively. In their conversations, they stated that difficulties are “unnecessary obstacles to overcome” for pleasure. Game context not only visualizes the existence of artifacts from the viewpoint of “pleasure,” it also opens up the field of meaning negotiation for people in various fields.

抄録全体を表示

 Since horses (Equus caballus) domesticated 5500 years ago, humans and horses have built a closed relationship.“Jinba Ittai”expresses this relationship, and it means “a feeling as if hearts of a human and a horse are united”. What kind of a sense is a “Jinba Ittai”actually, when a human is in contact with a horse? What kind of processes occur the sense of “Jinba Ittai”? In present study, we examined “Jinba Ittai”which persons with experience of equestrian in training of horses for using interviews for them. In addition, we used M-GTA, which is the one of the qualitative analysis and focuses on the processes until a subjective sense occurs. The results showed that “Jinba Ittai”is a sense of operation agency (“It seems like the horse has become my limbs”) and a sense of smooth interaction (“We understand each other very well”). Additionally,we revealed that when a horse responds to instructions of a human immediately (i.e.,improved operation sense), the human feel “Jinba Ittai”. These results suggested that when the responses of other agent (such as horses) are produced immediately after the own responses, humans feel “Jinba Ittai”with the sense of smooth interaction.

抄録全体を表示

 When operating an automotive human-machine interface (HMI) device while driving,the driver moves his/her eyes to the operating device and the display. In order to use the HMI without distracting from the main driving operation, it is important to minimize the visual workload of the secondary HMI task. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of instrument panel design on the driver’s visibility and usability of the HMI device. Our driving evaluation suggests that instrument panel decoration affects the driver’s performance of HMI manipulation. Specifically, manipulation speed and the detection accuracy of a target in the peripheral vision were improved when the most salient line of the instrument panel was orthogonal to the optical flow of the roadway in the windshield. Moreover, the color of the panel also affected the performance. These results indicate that a well-designed instrument panel can reduce visual workload of the secondary HMI task by improving visibility of the HMI device. Application of this finding to the current instrument panel design is illustrated.

抄録全体を表示

 Conjunction fallacy (CF) is an irrational judgment of human intuition. CF is not only an erroneous response using heuristics but also the effects of misunderstanding the task. This study examined the differences of representations depending on the comprehension of the CF task (also called the Linda problem), and investigated when and how these differences occurred. In Experiment 1, participants had to read a passage, answer related questions, and recall the passage incidentally. The results indicated that the participants’ recall performance of question statements in the Linda problem, which conflicted with heuristics, predicted the CF proportion. In Experiment 2, a new task was conducted to emphasize the sentence in question statements of the Linda problem,and the emphasized effects were compared with Experiment 1. The results from Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1, and the effect of the modification was shown regardless of whether or not the answers used CF. It shows that participants who answered using CF did not misunderstand the meaning of the question sentence in the task comprehension phase. In Experiment 3, to examine whether the results of Experiment 1 reflected the memory transformation based on rationalization of the participant ’s answer in the recall phase or the task comprehension substitution based on heuristics in the judgment phase, the recall performance was compared between the CF task and the task that could be answered correctly using heuristics. The results revealed that the difference in the recall performance of the question sentence depended on using heuristics. These findings suggest that CF occurrence was predicted by comprehension of the question (Experiment 1), while difference in comprehension representation arises when making heuristic judgments (experiments 2 and 3). This study not only provides new data on CF occurrence and mechanisms but also suggests the importance of considering the relationship between task comprehension and heuristic judgment.

抄録全体を表示

 In order to design the intended personality impressions of a robot in human–robot body contact situations, we should identify the impression formation mechanism, both systematically and quantitatively. In this study, we examine how the humanlike appearance of a robot influences the causal relationships between touch sensations and personality impressions, by using a child-type android robot called Affetto. Each of the 40 Japanese participants joined in one of the two conditions in which the humanlike appearance is different. As a result of the factor and path analyses on the evaluation scores of the touch sensations and personality impressions provided by the participants,the causal structures were found to be different for the two conditions: the number of causal relationships was larger for the condition in which the robot appearance was more humanlike. This suggests a personality forming mechanism by which the interpersonal cognitive function is activated more strongly to associate the touch sensations with personality, by perceiving the humanlike features of a robot.

抄録全体を表示

 It has been suggested that, in insight problem solving, implicit information processing plays important role. In this study, we examined whether problem solvers can store and use subliminal hint information even when subliminal distractor was subsequently presented. Using Continuous Flash Suppression (CFS), we compared the no-overwrite group (this group was exposed to the hint image for 6 seconds.), overwrite group (this group was exposed to the hint image for 3 seconds and then it was switched to a distractor image for the rest of 3 seconds.), and the control group which was exposed to none of them. The results showed that, while the overwrite and no-overwrite groups outperformed the control group in solving a difficult insight problem, there was no difference between the overwrite and no-overwrite groups. These results suggest that subliminal hint information is not overwritten by distractor information subsequently presented and lead problem solvers to exhibit better performance.

抄録全体を表示

 This paper describes a framework of critical thinking research approaches in cognitive sciences. First, we define the concept of critical thinking based on previous research findings. Second, we describe the history of the idea of critical thinking in philosophy,psychology, and education. Third, we discuss the processes and components of critical thinking based on cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence following which, we describe teaching and evaluating critical thinking. Lastly, we introduce a framework of critical thinking (comprising the componential, acquisition, and contextual models) in cognitive sciences and discuss future research.

抄録全体を表示