Previous research has shown that speech and the interaction of one’s thoughts with others encourage knowledge integration in cooperative problem-solving. However, speech is not always effective and may prevent knowledge integration. This study identified speech types that prevent knowledge integration using a mathematical figure task in cooperative situations. Study 1 generated a hypothesis and tested it through two experiments to identify the speech types that associate with knowledge integration failures in cooperative situations. The results indicated that negative speech toward problem-solving, which hindered the thought process, was associated with knowledge integration failures in cooperative situations. Study 2 examined factors leading to negative speech and found that beliefs such as “math is hard” and “pair partner’s negative speech” promoted their own negative speech. Study 3 examined whether the effects of negative speech affect the speaker or listener. Further, it showed that listening to negative speech hindered knowledge integration. This result suggests that negative speech lowers the efficiency of cooperative group learning. Study 4 clarified the causal relationship between negative speech and knowledge integration using an intervention to suppress negative speech. The results showed that the intervention worked effectively. Moreover, it revealed that a decrease in negative speeches results in better retrieval of knowledge integration performance. Therefore, this study showed that speech might hinder knowledge integration depending on the speech during cooperative learning.

This study explores the influences of affective empathy and cognitive empathy on readers’ perspective adoption when they are mentally simulating an action event. We used the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis, 1980) to measure each participant’s affective and cognitive empathy and a sentence-picture verification task, which leads participants to mentally simulate events by verifying the congruity between actions described in written sentences and actions depicted in picture stimuli. Forty-eight Japanese speakers read Japanese null-subject sentences and saw pictures depicting the actions described in the sentences from either an agent’s or an observer’s perspective. Crucially, the omitted subjects (second or third-person pronouns) of each critical sentence could be inferred from a preceding contextual sentence. The results suggest that, during the mental simulation of action events, individuals with relatively high cognitive empathy are more likely than those with relatively low cognitive empathy to adopt different perspectives based on available contextual information, while affective empathy does not appear to influence perspective adoption. We conclude that cognitive empathy, but not affective empathy, significantly contributes to the pragmatic skills language users need to utilize contextual information as a complement to linguistic information, particularly to interpret non-linguistically-expressed elements such as omitted subjects.

Why do humans try to discover better alternatives to solve a problem even when they already have a solution? Such flexibility to reject the familiar solution and to search for and discover better alternatives supports creative problem solving. Previous research has shown that participants who found alternatives are less likely to bias their attention toward the fixation-related areas, even when they are fixated on the trained procedure, compared to non-finder. The present study examined whether an intentional search for information irrelevant to the trained procedure under the successful situation is related to finding alternatives. Experimental results indicated that finders intentionally searched for a greater amount of information irrelevant to fixation, even when solving a problem with the trained procedure. In addition, it was shown that the difference in the intentional search might be caused by the strength of reinforcement of fixation on the trained procedure.

Although creativity is defined as a combination of both novelty and usefulness, individuals generally tend to overlook usefulness when evaluating creativity. However, usefulness tends to matter for high novelty-seeking (NS) individuals and its consideration by low-NS individuals is promoted by the presence of a normative definition of creativity. This study examined the interaction between NS and with or without a definition in creativity evaluation. The following two hypotheses were verified: Although high-NS individuals consider both novelty and usefulness, low-NS individuals consider only novelty, and when a definition of creativity is presented, low-NS individuals also consider usefulness. In the experiment,189 participants were asked to rate the creativity of three types of stationery products (novel and useful, only novel, or only useful) with and without a definition presented and then respond to the NS scale. The results showed that high-NS individuals rated the creativity of novel and useful products higher than only novel ones, whereas low-NS individuals initially rated the creativity of both products equally but modified their ratings in line with high-NS individuals after the presentation of the definition. These results confirmed all hypotheses.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a model of meta learning in acquiring expertise in the field of insight problem solving. We gave 4 participants a series of 12 geometric insight problems and analyzed the process microscopically. By modeling causal relationships between observed variables using covariance structure analysis, we found that 1) an increase in both variety of trials and appropriateness of evaluation improves performance, 2) the variety of trials and appropriateness of evaluation are enhanced by activating cognitive coordination with external resources; that is, epistemic interaction with external resources to distribute the cognitive load to the environment and find information that is hidden or hard to compute mentally. These findings suggest that meta learning is a result of the activation of the interaction between the cognitive component (variety of trials and appropriateness of evaluation) and the situational-perceptual component (cognitive coordination with external resources).

This study quantitatively examined the relationship between implicit attitudes towards gender expression minorities and minority identity using the Implicit Association Test (IAT). In the IAT, paired stimuli of high and low gender consistency images, as well as words indicating good and bad emotional valence, were presented. Higher IAT scores indicated a greater automatic preference for representations of gender expression minorities. Participants completed the IAT and a questionnaire online. Participants whose gender identity did not align with their assigned gender at birth were excluded to minimize ingroup effects within gender minorities and incomplete data were also excluded. Of the 142 participants, 115 data were used in the analysis. One-way ANOVA results showed that gender, minority identity, suffering as a minority, and experiences overcoming suffering were related to the IAT score. Two-way ANOVA showed that the interaction between gender and minority identity was significant. There was a significant difference in scores between women and men in the “none,” “weak,” and “moderate” minority identity groups, with women scoring significantly higher than men. Post-hoc analysis revealed that women with a “strong” minority identity scored significantly lower than other women’s groups. The group with a “strong” minority identity scored closest to 0 within both gender, suggesting that a strong self-identification as a minority may relate to a weaker automatic preference for a particular group.

Musicians have to coordinate movements interpersonally to perform in an ensemble. As such, this study explores how violinists coordinate movements to play the same melody together in terms of the leader–follower relationships revealed by players’ movements. Twelve violinists participated in the study and played a violin ensemble in pairs. We applied Granger causality analysis to the three-dimensional displacement data of players’ heads, violins, and bows to identify leader–follower relationships between players. The results revealed the following: i) the participants adopted leader–follower roles during trials; ii) as the performance proceeded, the participants swapped roles; iii) the more difficult the parts of the score, the more notable the leader–follower relationships; iv) compared with between-head and between-violin data, the movements for between-bow data were more similar in more parts of the score that demonstrated leader–follower relationships. Further examination of cases where the leader–follower relationships were identified showed that players may have employed their own strategies to achieve a stable, coordinated state. These results suggest that, when the roles of players are not fixed in violin ensembles, performance can be adjusted in multiple ways, including swapping leader–follower roles, which is in stark contrast to previous studies that reported fixed leader–follower relationship when the first violinist only led the other parts in a string quartet.

In bodily ownership illusion studies, most illusory finger deformation works from proximal to distal, and there are few reports concerning deformation that leads to finger widening. We hypothesized that the difference in the number of reports between the two types of finger deformations suggests anisotropy in illusory finger deformation. To examine this, we conducted an experiment to compare the cognitive cost of finger deformation between the distal and lateral directions of the finger using nonvisual rubber hand illusion (self-touch illusion). Specifically, we measured subjective ratings of the ownership and deformation as well as the proprioceptive drift of the involved finger during the illusory experience in the two directions. The experimental results showed that (1) the sense of illusory ownership in the distal layout was significantly greater than that in the lateral layout, and (2) the sense of illusory deformation correlated significantly positively with the proprioceptive drift of the receptive finger. The results support our hypothesized anisotropy.

It is important to maintain the communication with an agent (e.g., a robot), when people enjoy the human-agent communication. Recent studies reported that using shiritori, a game where players say a word starting with the last letter of the previous word, may be effective to verbally communicate with an agent speaking semi-natural language (i.e., words expressed by the combination of sounds of “do” and “ra”). This study examined what factors influence the communication with the agent using such language. Experiment 1 investigated the effect of the timing of providing information on the guessing of the word expressed by semi-natural language. Participants watched a video clip of the agent using such language, guessed the meaning of the word it spoke, and reported their confidence in their guess. They were provided information about the initial letter and the number of characters before or after watching the video clips. The results suggest that the timing of the information is not important to guess the semi-natural language word. Experiment 2 investigated the effect of shiritori with the agent on the guessing of semi-natural language. Participants were assigned to one of three groups: assuming shiritori, informed of the initial letter, and non-informed groups. The confidence rating was higher in the shiritori group than in the other groups. Therefore, the information provided by shiritori should be important to guess the semi-natural language words. We also discussed the possibility that the typical word pairs in shiritori can influence the guessing of such language.

This study examined how cultural self-construal and others’ facial expressions affect shifting in decision-making due to conformity during discussion by using a stimulus video, which presented a discussion scene in online communication. Eye gaze during the stimulus presentation was measured to understand the allocation of attention during the opinion evaluation. The video included one speaker expressing an opinion and five audience members using facial expressions to reflect their opinion toward the speaker. After watching the video, participants responded to a questionnaire asking to what extent they agreed or disagreed with the speaker’ s opinion and an independent-interdependent self-construal scale. The results indicated that others’ facial expressions influence decision-making during discussions and that people with higher interdependent self-construal tend to be influenced by others’ facial expressions. Gaze measurements did not show that people with higher interdependent self-construal pay more attention to surrounding others. However, it suggested that people who tend to pay more attention to surrounding others are more likely to shift in decision-making due to conformity.

Time perception is a fundamental aspect of many perceptual and cognitive functions. It enables us to perceive the world in a temporally consistent manner. Nonetheless, time perception is highly susceptible to non-temporal information. Indeed, many temporal distortions of sensory events have been reported in the past few decades, and researchers have used such illusions as a tool to investigate the psychological and neural processes that are related to the representation of time. One of the prominent illusions is the temporal oddball effect, in which a novel stimulus is perceived to last longer in duration than a repeated stimulus. Numerous studies tried to reveal the underlying mechanisms of this illusion, and several theoretical frameworks have been developed to account for the experimental findings. However, the perceptual and cognitive bases of the temporal oddball effect remain unclear, and further integrated discussion is required. Here, we review three influential hypotheses (i.e., pacemaker hypothesis, repetition suppression hypothesis, and perceptual strength hypothesis) of the temporal oddball effect and summarise critical findings that provided empirical evidence for each hypothesis. We then discuss the sensory process that plays a key role in the oddball effect and the avenues for future research on time perception.

Previous studies have suggested that implicit information processing plays an important role in insight problem solving. However, some studies reported that when subliminal hint information was presented in sequential order, performance did not improve. On the other hand, recent research has found that sequential presentation of subliminal cues and motor information induced by illusory line motion improved performance. However, the improvement might not be due to the motion information but to the mere presentation of the cues. In order to test this possibility, we conducted an experiment that consisted of three conditions (dynamic, static, and control). The results showed that the dynamic condition outperformed the other conditions, which suggested the crucial role of motion information, at least in insight problems requiring sequential operations.

How do people judge the “kakkoyosa” (coolness) of a performance? In this study, we define “coolness” as “conformity to norms” and examine the factors that determine “coolness,” excluding “skillfulness,” toward freestyle basketball (FB) performers. Six males who had served as judges in FB battles were presented with ten experimental stimulus movies in which the performers were modeled in 3D and asked to rate their impressions. After the experiment was completed, they were asked to explain their ratings. The ratings were not consistent among the experimental participants. It is thought that the experimental participants evaluated the stimulus movies by looking for “specific FB mental images” that could be the “norm” for the stimulus movies and comparing them to the stimulus movies as the “FB norms.” However, we believe that the participants’ evaluations differed because of the different “FB norms” applied by the experimental participants. A qualitative examination of the interviews revealed that participants noticed differences in performer movements in the stimulus movies with regard to “waiting” and “entering.” Particularly, they tended to judge “coolness” in terms of the “waiting” situation, when the performers await their performing turn. It is thought that the “FB norms,” which are easily associated with “skillfulness,” were not used to judge “coolness” in the “waiting” situation. We believe that instead of the “FB norm,” the “performance norm,” referring to whether the performer behaved as a performer being watched by the audience while awaiting his/her turn to perform, was used to evaluate “coolness.”

In this study, we examined the effect of the categorization in concept combination. For this purpose, we used the alternative categories task (ACT), which is training to generate ad hoc categories. A comparison of high and low concept relevance indicated that lower relevance improved each production’ s creativity, originality, validity, and interestingness scores. The results also showed that the ACT group’ s creativity and originality scores improved. More analyses to examine the effects of ACT suggested that it may have the effect of promoting a different perspective on a concept. Alternatively, it may create a unique category that helps to overcome resistance to submitting original work to others.

Optic flow is important perceptual information for regulating behavior in humans and other organisms (observers) with visual organs. This study investigated the effects of global optic flow (GOF) caused by observer movement and local optic flow (LOF) resulting from object movement on visual search. In this experiment, GOF consisted of a group of dots diffusing from the center of the screen to the outside of the screen with constant acceleration; the LOF was a single ring of dots expanding with constant acceleration. LOF was randomly generated from one of the eight placeholders equidistant from the center of the screen and equally spaced from each other. The objective was to visually locate and distinguish the numbers (targets) that appeared after LOF vanished, both with and without GOF. The interaction between “the positional relationship between LOF and the target” and “the time interval between the disappearance of LOF and the presentation of the target” was significant in the reaction time. Therefore, the expanding ring may have served as a cue to focus on the diagonal target within the screen. Additionally, an analysis of the distribution of gaze data showed that when GOF was presented, the gaze was drawn more frequently through its central region. According to these results, the gaze was directed toward the area where the GOF and LOF were parallel.