The view of embodied cognition suggests that semantic memory shares processing resources with sensorimotor systems. The aim of the present study is to reveal what kind of impact motor simulation will make on memories of objects, which are manipulated by hands, and to elucidate the mechanism in which motor simulations functions. In Experiment 1, images of manipulable and non-manipulable objects were presented, and participants were instructed to memorize them while adopting different postures depending on the conditions. The result has confirmed that restraining the hand movement produces a specific decrease in the recall rate of the manipulable objects, but not in that of the non-manipulable ones. In experiment 2, words representing the name of the objects were used as stimuli. We examined the effect of hand position difference between learning and recall and the influence of the visibility of the hands on the performance of the learning process. The result showed that the origin of the decreased recall rate of the manipulable objects is the constrained hand movement, not the difference of the hand position or the visibility of hands. These results provide a piece of positive evidence that motor simulation plays a role in the long term memory of an object.

This study focused on two similar but potentially distinctive emotions, awe and being moved. Although these emotions have been studied independently, they have commonalities both in cognition and emotion. For example, both have been shown to influence cognitive frameworks (Tokaji, 2004), such as need for accommodation (Keltner & Haidt, 2003). In addition, when instructed to write about being moved, Japanese descriptions resembled descriptions about awe in Western descriptions (Hashimoto & Ogura, 2002; Shiota, Keltner, & Mossman, 2007). In this study, we hypothesized that these two emotions overlap in linguistic labeling and in perceived emotional states. To test this hypothesis, we conducted two survey studies in Japan. Study1 examined how people labeled emotional states caused in various awe-inducing and being-movedinducing situations. Study1 indicated that some of typical awe experiences were likely to be labeled as being-moved experiences. Study2 showed that the experience of awe was more similar to an emotional state of being deeply moved by a life event, than being normally moved by a daily event. Therefore the present studies suggest that being moved and awe are more likely to overlap when the situation is a deeply moving life event.

In software development, deliverables in an upstream process are reviewed to ensure their quality and to reduce error propagation to the downstream process. Methods are available for evaluating the review quality. In this study, we considered the defect detection process in a review of Requirement Definition Documents and tested a potential relationship between the gaze patterns and review quality. Specifically, we analyzed the relationship between the gaze patterns, with a primary focus on the blink rate, in a review of RDDs and detection accuracy. A significant nonlinear correlation between the blink rate and the detection accuracy was observed; moreover, the subsequent regression analysis also verified the blink rate as the best predictor of the review quality, notwithstanding the use of other gaze patterns. This result indicates that the blink rate is a major predictor of a type of review performance.

Humans can utilize the other persons' knowledge as their own knowledge as a function of the mirror neuron. In this study, we examined whether knowledge of results (KR) is utilized for self-motor adjustment when a person is provided with others' adjustment motion, and what kind of motor information is transmitted between people. The participants performed a jumping height adjustment task involving a vertical jump. This task involved adjusting the target height (50% of the height of a maximum effort trial), with obtaining the KR for each trial. We conducted the task under the following two conditions: (i) individual condition (12 subjects), with one subject performing four trials; and (ii) group condition (12 groups), with four subjects performing one trial each, while they observed others' motions and shared their KR. We collected the data on ground reaction forces and coordinates of twenty body points. Under both conditions, participants gradually approached the target jumping height as the number of trials increased. When the transition of jumping height was approximated using a logistic curve, both waveforms were found to be similar. This finding demonstrates that the learning patterns of both conditions are similar, which means that others' KR is utilized in self-motor adjustment. Additionally, when examining the way of height adjustment, we found that the jumping height was adjusted by the “power”of the shoulder and hip joints under both conditions. Therefore, we considered that the KR, and the “power” of the joints corresponding to adjusted motion, were transmitted through observation, hence making the adjustment of jumping height possible. We concluded that motor adjustments are connected not only by the aspect of the behavior but also by the aspect of motor control. These outcomes can be applied to new motor learning methods for rehabilitation and can provide expert tips for human movement.

Information processing involved in inference and decision-making has been explained from the viewpoint of the dual processes: intuitive system 1 and reflective system 2. The relationship between these two systems has been examined based on the difference between correct and incorrect answers in bias task. However, recently, another possible position, which questions the classification based on these answers, has been identified. For example, it is known that even if a participant provides an incorrect answer in a bias task, they may be able to detect a conflict between information about the correct and incorrect answers. In this study, participants were categorized according to their responses provided in the bias task and the presence or absence of conflict detection. The results showed that the functions of the two systems differ within the same answer. This result suggests that the classification based on the bias tasks is incomplete and that researchers need to consider a classification of participants based on the presence or absence of conflict detection.

Previous studies have suggested that, implicit information processing plays important roles in insight problem solving. However, some studies reported that, when subliminal hint information was presented in a sequential order, performance did not improve. The results might suggest that subliminally presented information was stored in a rather static way, and could not be integrated with succeeding subliminal information. In order to examine whether subliminal information presented sequentially can be integrated to control solution strategies, we employed, as a method of presenting subliminal hint, the Illusory Line Motion (ILM), where presentation of a dot followed by a line produces illusory extension of the line. In Experiment 1, we presented three lines with dots using ILM to examine if it could produce better performance in the nine dots problem. Although there was no increase in the solution rate, more subjects in the experimental condition drew lines in accord with the order of hints. Experiment 2 suggested that the results obtained by Experiment 1 could not be attributed to presentation of dots outside the square frame formed by nine dots. These results suggest that sequentially presented subliminal information could be integrated and used jointly in later problem solving.

Decision making is justified using a variety of external information. In this study, we set up an experimental situation that justifies the first decision based on a bar graph as external information. We examined how top-down factors such as impressions and attitudes affect the judgment and graph comprehension. Our hypothesis includes the following two points;(1) The first decision making may be made based on the top-down factors. (2) In the graph comprehension phase, in order to justify the first decision, the bias to selectively consider information consistent with the decision is strengthened, and the influence of top-down factors may disappear relatively. As results of two experiments, there was no significant effect of the impression on the decision, but the effect from the attitude was observed. In addition, there was no significant effect of impression and attitude on understanding of the graph after the decision. These results were discussed, compared to previous research findings by Fukuoka et al. (2019), dealing with situations where the decision was made after the graph comprehension.

Charitable donations play an important role in the upliftment of a society. This study examines how to facilitate donations by subjective value of the money. Previous studies have shown that people generally discount delayed value of a reward with delay of receipt. We conducted an online experiment in which an extra reward was handed out by lottery to participants and they were asked to make a judgment on the extra reward, and used a 3 (amount of extra reward: 50/500/1000 yen) × 2 (delay: a day/a month) design resulting in six conditions. We hypothesized that the smaller the amount of an extra reward and the more it is delayed, the lower the subjective value of the reward becomes, and the more people would be willing to donate. Two-hundred and two undergraduates were randomly assigned to one of the six conditions. They were asked to answer a questionnaire measuring participants' delay-discounting rates, social value orientation (SVO), subjective socioeconomic status (subjective SES), and money beliefs. They were then told they had received an extra reward and were required to choose one of three options for the delayed extra reward: receive, reject, or donate. The results showed that a smaller extra reward and higher delay-discounting rates increased donation choice, but we could not obtain the effect of the delay in time until the participants received the extra reward. Therefore, we concluded that reducing the subjective value of the money could promote donation.

It is frequently mentioned that a unique interpretation that is different from daily-life interpretation arises in the cognitive process of art activity. People can interpret not only artworks but non-art objects in an artistic way, and they can often discover some new aspects of daily objects and their own viewpoints through this interpretation process. Bringing new viewpoints to our daily lives through art activity seems to be an essential issue in the art education field, connecting art activity to people's everyday lives. In this study, we investigated this reinterpretation process of a non-art object in detail. We expected that the activation of prior knowledge about art of the participant would influence the interpretation of a non-art object. We conducted a between-subjects experiment to investigate this process. We set two types of conditions to manipulate participants' artistic context. For participants in the experimental group, we assigned the task “to find some objects which you can think of as artwork” to activate participants' prior knowledge about art. For participants in the control group, the task was “to find some objects whose names begin with a given letter.” The results suggest that the activation of prior knowledge about art influenced and facilitated the interpretation process of non-art objects.

In this paper, we propose a research approach that is used in cognitive science to investigate more complex coordination mechanisms between three or more people. That is, we propose an approach that uses position data to quantitatively analyze group behavior and to link these characteristics with the cognition of anticipating others' behaviors. It is important for coordination to anticipate others' behaviors and to adapt one's own body movement to others based on anticipation. We highlight previous studies on problem solving and learning in cognitive science which have investigated interaction processes from verbal protocols during task implementation and indicated the importance of understanding others' perspectives. Additionally, recent cognitive models of estimating others' intentions and anticipating others' behaviors during interactions using non-verbal information such as eye movement, posture, and gesture, have been investigated. Considering these previous studies, we focus on group behavior and propose to apply the new approach mentioned above to discuss a mechanism of more complex coordination. We also refer to some studies of biological group behaviors in biology, artificial life, and sports science, and demonstrate a potential issue that such papers did not focus on the cognition related to coordinative group behaviors. This paper illustrates an example of discussing interactions with others, to which the new approach is applied. Our previous study here analyzed children's group behavior during nursery activities using position data and linked these characteristics with the cognitive development of anticipating others' behaviors based on spontaneous sociality. However, it is difficult to investigate some details of group behavior due to the limitation of field measurement, for example, the accuracy of a child's anticipation and whether a child moved based upon anticipation. In future work, it is important to analyze controlled group behavior and to indicate accuracy of individuals' anticipation from movement data to solve these problems.

This paper reviews the research on how one passes through an aperture between non-human objects or between humans. In particular, we discuss what it has so far elucidated and what should be investigated in the future. The previous studies have focused on aperture passability between non-human physical objects and revealed the relationship between how people actually pass through an aperture and how they perceive themselves in relation to environmental characteristics by looking at how people judge passability of an aperture (often formalized as π-number). Most researchers have attended to the factors associated with an actor passing an aperture and/or non-human objects constituting an aperture, but few have examined how one passes an aperture comprised of humans. This may be because it is difficult to experimentally control underlying factors such as conversations and/or physical/social interactions between humans, symmetry of an aperture due to different shapes of the human body, anisotropic shape of personal space, eye gaze, and/or eye contact. Despite these difficulties, we consider it important to study how people pass an aperture between humans, because, first and foremost, that is what we do in everyday life, and, secondly, the outcome will illuminate how people consider socio-cultural factors, personal space,opportunities of actions (i.e., affordances) by ourselves and others. Possible solutions to the difficulties may include use of virtual reality technologies, computer simulation to control the experimental settings to guarantee reproducibility. There are the pros and cons with these methods to discuss, because, depending on how they are employed, they may possibly spoil the very social and interactive (improvisational) nature of the phenomenon under discussion.

This study investigated the influence of affective valence and the typicality of events on their false recognition. Twentynine participants were asked to learn the event list with a positive, negative, or neutral script. In the recognition task, two types of unlearned new critical lure events were presented along with the learned events. One of them was a typical event for the script, and the other was an atypical one. The results showed that false recognition was observed only in the typical lure event. Moreover, false recognition of typical lure was increased when it had positive affective valence and decreased when it had the negative one. These results suggest that the false memory of a stimulus, which constructs a category list structure (e.g., script), is caused by the semantic confusion error occurring during recall. Positive affective valence may encourage the reference to script knowledge in the recognition of the event, and an unexperienced event may be confused semantically in light of typicality of the knowledge.

Previous studies have shown perceptual processing cross-modal correspondences between spatial high/low positions and auditory high/low pitches. Several studies also found that auditory pitch influences spatially defined motor responses, suggesting that perceptual and motoric information regarding spatial and auditory high/low stimuli are shared. However, it remains unclear whether spatial position influences auditorily defined motor responses. We addressed this question by examining vocal responses to high/low pitches. In our experiment, sixteen participants vocalized a meaningless sound (/a/) at high/low pitch in response to spatially high/low stimuli under compatible and incompatible conditions. Results showed that the onset of vocalization was shorter under the compatible condition than the incompatible conditions. Together with previous studies, the current results suggest that information regarding spatial high/low position and auditory high/low pitch are bidirectionally and consistently shared across perceptual and motor systems.