Psychological and physiological effects of 18 kinds of colored lights were examined using a liquid crystal display in a dark environment (< 0.1 lx). The colored lights were characterized with the tones with various lightness and saturation, i.e., the colors named ‘dark’, ‘deep’, ‘vivid’, ‘bright’, ‘light’, and ‘pale’ in the Practical Color Co-ordinate System conditions. To investigate psychological and physiological effects, we used electroencephalography and a simple questionnaire. Subjective evaluations of ‘comfort’, ‘relaxation’, ‘awakening’, ‘tension’, and ‘anxiety’ were conducted using a five-level psychological preferences evaluation. Electroencephalographic and psychological evaluations revealed that the bright tone had a good effect for relaxation. Colored lights with ‘dark’ or ‘deep’ tone enhanced the degrees of tension and anxiety. As regards red and blue lights, ‘vivid’ tone with highest saturation enhanced the degrees of awakening.

View full abstract

Since 2003 the Japanese government has been enhancing tourism-related measures in order to increase Japan's national tourism industry. In this situation industrial tourism is greatly expected to develop as a new type of tourism in which people can learn and enjoy local culture and history from different angles. Industrial museums play an important role as core facilities for this industrial tourism. But unfortunately there is not enough data about industrial museums in Japan, because major surveys don't treat them as an independent category. For this reason we started original research on them in 2005. In this paper, based on the results of our research, we clarify current conditions and problems of industrial museums in Ehime Prefecture.

View full abstract

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the typeface of the brand name and the shape of the sake bottle on impression formation on the sake and the estimation of its price. Participants rated their impressions and prices of nine stimuli patterns that were combinations of three typefaces of the brand name (mincho, gothic, and semi-cursive script) and three shapes of sake bottles (slender, shoulder dilated, and stocky). A factor analysis revealed six factors: commonplaceness, unattractiveness, clarity/stability, familiarity, lightness, and gentleness. In addition, the combination of the mincho typeface and slender shape conveyed commonplaceness, the gothic/semi-cursive script and stocky shape conveyed novelty, and the semi-cursive script and slender shape conveyed attractiveness. Moreover, the combination of the semi-cursive script and slender shape conveyed a high price. Multiple regression analysis revealed that the semi-cursive script had low familiarity and the low familiarity led to a high price.

View full abstract

The importance of team medical treatment in which doctors and co-medical colleagues (i.e., nurse, pharmacist, CRC, and so on) treat cancer together has been increasing. The nurse's main roles are to help with the cancer therapy and provide mental support to patients and families. We surveyed the concerned nurse's involvement in the cancer therapy using a questionnaire. We asked them the need for palliative care, importance of team medical treatment, etc. The purpose of our analysis was to explore factors that influence the nurse while providing palliative care. Multiple linear regression analysis is one of the most popular methods for performing data analysis of questionnaires. However, it cannot construct a model with an interaction effect and nonlinear structure. We adopted the rule ensemble (RE) method because it can model nonlinear and interaction structures. Furthermore, in the RE method, the estimated model can be interpreted based on rules (base learner). Moreover, we illustrated some graphical representation evaluation of estimated RE model. Therefore, we provided some influence factors about the intention of the nurse during palliative care and illustrated them using a graphical representation.

View full abstract

We have evaluated variations in sensibility when we operate a radio-controlled toy car using controllers with variable level of tele-existence. We installed a wireless camera and a microphone on a radio-controlled toy car and developed two simple tele-existence controllers to operate the car. The operator can watch the scenery and hear the sound at the car either on a head-mount display (HMD) and a headphone set or on a large-size regular display and a speaker. Using controllers with those two tele-existence systems and without, we evaluated variations of psychological and sensibility conditions through several subjectivity evaluation experiments. First, we found that the level of feeling of force, reality and interest is higher with the case of simple tele-existence system using HMD than both the tele-existence system using the large-sized display and no tele-existence cases. Next, various sound effects such as the engine sound and music and vibration effects based on the engine sound were added to the tele-existence controllers and their effects were studied. The factor analysis of the data from the case with HMD resulted in the following five main factors: the impact factor, comfort factor, pleasure factor, good-feeling factor and tightening factor. The impact factor increased when both the sound effect such as the engine sound and music and vibration based on the engine sound are added. The good-feeling factor increased when operating the car while listening to music only. Finally, we found that the feelings of fear and of shock were generated when operators caused collisions while they drove the toy car using HMD. This suggests that the operation of a radio-controlled toy car with the simple tele-existence using HMD can induce a psychological state similar to that at the time of traffic accidents.

View full abstract

The opportunity that we want to search target document(s) among a large amount of electronic documents such as WEB information and documents inputted by document scanner will be more increasing in near future. We focus on the approach that applies the distribution pattern of the keyword frequency in documents to the search of the documents. In this paper, we propose the method that uses the correspondence analysis for the search of documents based on the similarity of the keyword pattern among them. We apply the proposed method to the data of patents of Nagoya University, and report the result in terms of the accuracy for the document search. The experimental result shows that we can find the related patents to the inputted keyword by a user.

View full abstract

There are a lot of long-standing companies in Kyoto, these companies are famous in worldwide. Also, you can see a typical long-standing company in all categories of business. The product and service which these companies offers have provided the peculiar value that starts appealing to human sensibility. However, it is high possible that to keep providing the same product and service with the special value is left in the trend, and it often becomes impossible to carry on their business. So, they can not continue their business in a long term and it is impossible to be a long-standing company. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the change of product/service by innovation for the Kyoto long-standing companies. We present three long-standing companies case at Kyoto. First, it is the long-standing inn “Tawaraya.” Second, it is the long-standing incense “Yamadamatsu.” Finally, it is the long-standing Karakami (a sliding door) “Karacho.” According to the case studies based on interviews, we analyze their innovation of their Kansei product and service using the product innovation method.

View full abstract

The concept of entropy which was introduced by Clausius in 1850 as a thermodynamic property has been extended to the economics theory, information theory, and others. Even though “entropy” is used in many fields of science, it is not easy to understand the concept of entropy, as well as describing it by words/terms. In this paper, we investigated an appropriate way of representing the concept of entropy by words. At first, we surveyed the commonly used words in describing the concept of entropy. We pointed out the problem that the language expression does not accurately represent the entire concept of entropy. Secondly we examined the correlation between the thermodynamic entropy calculated from the particle animations simulating the molecular motion and the psychological quantity obtained by showing those animations to participants. As a result, we found that the representation of the word “degree of diffusion” has relatively good correlation with the entropy value.

View full abstract

In recent years, the communication technique known as coaching is getting a lot of attention, and beginning to be implemented in various fields. However, the psychological effect of coaching on healthy individuals remains unclear. In order to rectify this, we have conducted a coaching observation study, and implemented psychological testing to determine its effects in this area. Also, building on the precedent set by other studies, we have carried out analysis of the content of conversation during coaching. The results show a statistical relation between conversation content and the psychological effects of coaching.

View full abstract

The present study examined the effects of facial movements on impressions of facial appearance during dynamic smiling. The participants (80 women) rated the 68 women in the videos, posing with a smile, in terms of attractiveness, likability, and beauty on a 5-point scale. The displacements of the sides of both the cheeks and mouth areas in each video were measured using the optical flow method. Five time points were chosen from time series data that had been divided into four equal intervals. T-tests were applied to analyze the differences in displacements and velocities between the higher- and lower-rated-stimulus groups. The results indicate that the magnitudes of the initial displacements and the acceleration of the initial velocities were most important in creating a positive impression of dynamic smiles. The results also show that there are both common and specific relationships between facial movements and impressions of facial appearance.

View full abstract

In order to design suitable clothes for elderly women, we surveyed the body image consciousness, types of clothes that were purchased frequently, and clothing fit preference in women aged 60-89 years by questionnaire, and analysed the results by age group. When asked about their body image, more than half of them did not acknowledge any increase in bending of the back despite getting older. Recently purchasing and frequently wearing clothes is such as shirts and pants. However, this study revealed that they do not often purchase or wear skirts or dresses. Their preference when purchasing clothes is to highly value items that “suit their somatotype”, “comfortable” are appealing. Meanwhile, as a result of Primary Component Analysis in each age group, “functional clothing that emphasizes auxiliary life activities” in the first principal component shows a high amount of factor loading.

View full abstract

Various findings on color impression have become essential knowledge for professionals who handle colors as elements of design. Similarly, knowledge of memorized colors should be considered by design professionals. Researchers in color psychology have conducted various studies on memorized colors; however, a database on changing of colors cannot be built, because the investigated colors are limited to parts in the color space. In this paper, we propose an experimental method to reveal memorized colors. The apparatus consists of a personal computer and LCD display. The proposed method uses quantitative data on three attributes of memorized colors, and the manipulation of the apparatus is easier than the conventional method. We compare the study results with the findings of previous research papers. The results confirm the validity of the method. This study presents memorized colors of rarely investigated parts in the color space.

View full abstract

We have confirmed the fact that the sound quality of copied digital signal is, in some cases, better than the sound quality of the original CD”, then we have considered the concerned factors and characteristics to improve the sound quality. Since no sound quality measurement tool exist, discovered two objective key perceptual assessment phrases of losing “floating atmosphere in the air-like resonance” and losing “chest penetrating impression” (Appendix 1) are used for the evaluation of the sound quality. The improvement of sound quality is up to +3 in the 7-grade comparison scale.

View full abstract

Retraction of Duplicate Publication

View full abstract

Erratum
Transactions of Japan Society of Kansei Engineering Vol.12, No.2, p.335-341 (2013)

Title
Incorrect: ( in Japanese )
Correct: ( in Japanese )

Author's Names
Incorrect: HeeKyoung OH, Tamura TERUKO and Taeko HIROKAWA
Correct: HeeKyoung OH, Teruko TAMURA and Taeko HIROKAWA

View full abstract