Individuals with high social anxiety often fear that others will notice signs of anxiety via their facial expressions and evaluate them negatively. The current study examined the effects of wearing a mask that hides most of the face on interpersonal communication among people with high social anxiety. In a laboratory experiment, 58 participants rated their level of social anxiety. Subsequently, participants engaged in a 5-minute conversation with a partner with or without a mask, and rated their own communication. Coders then coded each participant's behavior during the conversation. The results revealed that participants in the high social anxiety group expressed more communicative behaviors and rated their own communication more positively when wearing a mask than when not wearing a mask. The possibility that wearing a mask may promote smooth communication in people with high social anxiety is discussed.

The aim of this study was to develop the Japanese version of the Mentalization Questionnaire (MZQ-J), used to measure mentalizing deficits, and to test its validity and reliability. The author conducted an Internet survey, and data for 250 adults were collected. A confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the MZQ-J had a single factor structure common to both genders, and sufficient internal consistency and test-retest reliability were confirmed. A correlation analysis showed that the MZQ-J was closely related to self-related mentalization as well as to mindfulness, empathy, Big Five personality traits, attachment, and self-esteem. The MZQ-J clearly showed correlations with pathological indicators of borderline personality traits and depression and anxiety. The results established the acceptable validity and reliability of the MZQ-J. The MZQ-J will also make it possible to provide appropriate clinical psychological assistance tailored to mentalizing capabilities and compare research findings of empirical studies regarding mentalizing at the international level.

The purpose of this study was to create a scale measuring the yarigai of human service professionals in the fields of medicine, welfare, and education and verify the scale's reliability and validity. In Study 1, responses to an open-ended questionnaire were collected from 759 service workers, and a provisional scale of 39 items was created. In Study 2, an online survey was administered to 1,999 human service professionals to examine factor structure, reliability, and validity. The factor analysis confirmed a structure of 28 items under the five factors of "growth and positive change in the recipient," "gratitude and trust," "smooth cooperation," "growth as a professional," and "positive evaluation at the workplace." A significant correlation was demonstrated with respect to test-retest reliability. Moreover, correlations were confirmed between work engagement and meaningful work, degree of job utilization and aptitude, and the intention to quit. These results suggest that the scale possesses a certain degree of reliability and validity.

Perimetric complexity, a character (letter) complexity metric, can be easily computed with a computer program and thus has the potential for application to characters in a wide range of languages. However, the validity of perimetric complexity for Japanese has only been tested for kana characters. Thus, the validity of perimetric complexity for kanji characters is still an open question that was addressed in the current study. We asked Japanese and English speakers to rate the subjective complexity of different kanji characters, which was averaged into the subjective complexity of each character for each speaker group. On the basis of these ratings, we calculated the correlations between perimetric complexity and subjective complexity. The results revealed three main findings: (a) we found strong correlations between the two factors (rs >.85), (b) the correlation was comparable to that between subjective complexity and other measures of character complexity (i.e., stroke count), and (c) subjective complexity was highly correlated between Japanese and English speakers. These results suggest that perimetric complexity is a valid index of the subjective complexity of kanji and is more useful than stroke count given its multilingual versatility.

The effect of older siblings on language development is a phenomenon in which secondborn children with an older sibling have lower levels of language skills than firstborn children without older siblings. Because this effect has been confirmed in only a few cultures (e.g., France and Singapore), it remains unclear whether the effect is robust and universal. Using data for 755 Japanese 4- to 5-year-olds from the Hamamatsu Birth Cohort for Mothers and Children, we investigated the effect of older siblings on children's language skills, measured as verbal IQ by the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI). Consistent with previous findings, results showed that secondborn children with an older sibling had significantly lower verbal IQ than firstborn children. Further analysis also confirmed previous findings: the more closely spaced the siblings' age gap, the higher the verbal IQ of the secondborn child. Therefore, the present findings suggest that the older sibling effect is robust in Japan and may be universal across cultures.

This study aimed to investigate differences in responses between groups by comparing online responses via smartphones using various response formats on Google Forms with responses from paper questionnaires among university students. Participants were randomly assigned to either an online group where they responded using one of grid, radio button, or linear scale formats, or a paper-based group. In each group, respondents answered multiple psychological scales and rated the visibility of the survey form. Additionally, response times and the ratio of careless responses were recorded. A total of 1,108 valid responses were analyzed. Results indicated that in the grid group, certain mean values of scale scores and some correlation coefficients differed from those in the paper-based group. Furthermore, there were more careless responses, longer response times, and lower ratings for form visibility in the grid group. Differences in mean values for some scales compared to the paper-based group were also observed in the linear scale group. The radio button group showed the least difference in responses compared to the paper-based group.

This study examined the construct validity of ambiguity scores, including the bipolarity and coexistence between extraversion (E) and introversion (I), thinking (T) and feeling (F), and sensation (S) and intuition (N) using the Jung Psychological Types Scale for Coexistence (JPTS-C). Despite the bipolarity assumption, the JPTS-C uses two pairs of items, each scored on a 7-point Likert scale in a unipolar format-to measure the coexistence of between E and I, T and F, and S and N. The results were as follows. (a) Correlational patterns were found among the ambiguity scores for the three subscales on JPTS-C and the Two-Sided Personality Scale. (b) Ambiguity scores between E and I had a negative correlation with anxiety on attitudes toward ambiguity, and ambiguity scores between S and N had a positive correlation with enjoyment and reception on attitudes toward ambiguity, and a negative correlation with dichotomous belief, although ambiguity scores between T and F had a positive correlation with enjoyment and control on attitudes toward ambiguity. This suggests that construct validity about ambiguity scores for the three subscales on JPTS-C was confirmed and that each characteristic of ambiguity score was different for the three subscales.