Body motions play an important role in human existence and expression. This paper focuses on body cognition by analyzing characteristics of Point-Light displays, the biological motion expressed through point light sources. For the analysis the point’s positions and movements were considered to be significant characteristics. In Experiment 1, we found three significant characteristics: (1) the length between head and foot, (2) head properties, and (3) similarity with a normal motion. In Experiment 2, 30 samples were assessed through qualitative and quantitative methods such as regression analysis to find out which characteristics are important. The result indicates that the important characteristic are combinations of the point’s positions and moving distance as well as direction.

The Services and Supports for Persons with Disabilities Act requires that Type B Continuous Vocational Aid Centers (VACs) develop marketable products. However, most social welfare agencies cannot design and market high-quality sheltered work products, so they need to collaborate with external experts. In this study, we focused on non- food products and two successful examples of such collaborations, one with the local government and the other with a commercial company, were analyzed to identify the factors underlying their success. Results showed that important success factors included application of active learning methods to encourage VACs members to take their own initiatives, designers’ on-site design process with VACs staff and disabled workers to create new ideas that utilize the workers’ characteristics, and sales site oriented product development with help of connoisseur of merchandise which attracts consumers. We applied these factors to a smaller scale collaboration project and found them effective.

Using near-infrared spectroscopy, the effect of facial self-touching on the prefrontal cortex activity was investigated by comparing the activations produced by the following conditions: 1) pressure applied to the cheeks (cheek-pressing) with bare hands, 2) cheek-pressing with hands wearing rubber groves, and 3) no touching. The results indicated that regions of the frontopolar cortex (FPC) and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) were significantly activated only under condition 1 (cheek-pressing with bare hands). In addition, the standard scores (z-scores) for cerebral blood flow in the FPC and OFC were significantly correlated with the subjective scores for pleasant emotions. These results indicate that the FPC and OFC are related to pleasant emotions during self-touching. These findings are expected to be applied to the quantitative assessment of pleasant emotions during facial self-touching.

We have been developing a cognitive assessment system to detect subtle symptoms of mild cognitive impairment. Here, we examined the feasibility to evaluate the spatial cognition by the sequential delayed matching-to-sample task, in which the participants were required to select the figure with the same angle as the sample. We prepared four groups of the figures (Landolt ring, back of the right hand, chicken and map of Hokkaido) with a variation of 8 rotation angles (0°, ±45°, ±90°, ±135°, 180°). Data from 20 normal adult participants were recorded as a control group for the future of clinical trials. The reaction time tended to be extended according to the complexity of the figures. It also changed depending upon the figure’s rotation angle, though the effect was not necessarily linear from their upright position. These results suggest that our task might contribute to evaluate a higher spatial cognitive ability in daily life.

The growth environment for University students has changed dramatically due to the widespread of developed IT usage and the relationship between human and surrounded objects, which significantly impacted their current lifestyle. In this study, Clarification of two clarified how university students are related to lifestyle and fashion sensibility behavior. Firstly, analysis of factors of lifestyle which extracted into two types. There are “Active factor” and “Emotional factor”. After Cluster analysis, it was classified into three: “Rich-Emotional type”, “Enjoy type” and “Stable type”. The Findings from the analysis of variance was that their “Behavior of Fashion Emotional Value” differs depending on their type of lifestyle. As a result, there was a degree of statistical significance among the three types of lifestyle and within the “fashion awareness” and “purchasing behavior”. This study could elucidate the “Behavior of Fashion Emotional Value” from the characteristics of fashion awareness and purchase behavior by its type.

This study aimed to obtain knowledge for improving usability through motion characteristics analysis based on peak velocity of drag on touch screens. We conducted an experiment in which an object was dragged to a target position. The drag direction and distance were adopted as experimental factors. Ten subjects participated in this study; their average age was 23.6 years. The results showed that the fingertip movement for drag corresponded well with the performance model based on Fitts’ law, and the usability decreased under the conditions with relatively long distance excepting the right direction. The peak velocity of dragging was almost linearly related to the distance to the target and was higher in the horizontal direction than in the vertical direction. Since the corrective movement for positioning at the target accounted for more than half of the drag movement, operation support for the corrective movement may improve usability.

Tools are indispensable for our daily life. For example, we use knives to process foods or other materials such as resin or wood. Tactile texture sensation which arises when we touch objects directly has been investigated by many groups. However, the sensation caused by the use of tools has not well been explored. In this study, we focused on kitchen knife which we often use for cooking, and evaluated sensation caused by the use of the kitchen knife. In the experiment, we asked 20 participants to cut 12 foods and rate the sensation of each item. Furthermore, we measured force and acceleration to analyze the relationship between sensation and these physical quantities. The result showed that sensation via cutting process can consist of three sensory factors, “ease of cutting”, “density”, and “elasticity”, and these sensory factors relate to the physical quantities.

In this study, we investigated the relation between autism spectrum tendencies of normal observers and evaluation of facial emotional expressions, used for “Ban Dainagon Emaki”. Recognition of facial expressions was verified by Scheffé’s (Nakaya) paired comparison method using the evaluation attributes of the four emotions (fear, anger, sadness, and happiness) in conjunction with investigation of the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ). Different cognitive patterns especially extracted from communication ability, were confirmed, comparing facial expression recognition tendencies for the two groups, higher levels of autistic - like traits and lower levels of autistic - like traits. Between the two groups, the high levels on the AQ were difficult to recognize the fear of negative emotions, but regarding the happiness of positive emotion, similar tendency was demonstrated. These results are consistent with the findings obtained from previous studies on the tendency of facial expression recognition between healthy individuals and those with traits of ASD.

This study is aimed at constructing a system that recommends flowers for gardening beginners. The recommendation system recommends based on impression to flowers. This system can be used for EC (Electronic Commerce) sites. In this paper, an experiment was conducted as a preliminary step to construct a recommendation system. The first purpose of this paper is to clarify the difference between simple color and flower color. The second is to clarify what kind of flowers are likely to be purchased. As a result of factor analysis of the experimental results, it was found that the elements that make up the impression differ between flower colors and simple colors. As for the relationship between flower impression and purchase, it was found that the purchase probability increases when the impression value changes to a positive impression value.

This study applies findings from educational psychology and operational research to course management in universities through a methodology that balances coursework to match student preferences and motivate them. First, we introduce the ARCS model from educational psychology and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) from operational research and explain the reasons for using AHP in this study. Next, we report the results of a questionnaire survey that captures student preferences toward different types of coursework in elective subjects lecture classes at the university level. Finally, we connect this questionnaire result to the four elements of motivation for learning included in the ARCS model.

Hairstyles are important for many women in visual attractiveness. However, it is difficult to objectively judge by themselves which hairstyle suits for them. Previous study has reported that circular-based complexity of psychological potential field (PPF), which can be calculated on digital images, indicates goodness of impressions for facial shapes. In this paper, we apply some complexities of PPF, including the previous complexity, to facial images to investigate whether good hairstyles for facial impressions can be quantified. Here, with constraining several facial components, subjective evaluation and objective evaluation have been compared by correlation analysis. Subjective evaluation adopts a paired comparison method, and objective evaluation adopts several shape analyses of PPF produced from each facial image. The results show a necessity to evaluate PPF with the gender separated. Moreover, some three-dimensional complexities of PPF indicated a certain effectiveness to assess good impression for hairstyles.

Reading is human intellectual activity itself. Therefore, there have been many discussions to clarify this principle for a long time. In recent years, with the advent of electronic books (e-books), which are highly functional books, reading has become more enriching. However, it is less clear what affect this new way of reading is having on the reader. In this regard, we aim to clarify the effects of social reading, the reading of sharing with others using features specific to e-books. We focused on the sharing of reviews, which is common in social reading, and used an experimental system to analyze latent factors and satisfaction. As a result, we found two factors and three clusters constituting potential factors, and four quadrants and three clusters constituting satisfaction.

In product design, it has become important to classify users into several types and to design products for each type. In the field of Kansei engineering, users have been classified based on questionnaires. However, questionnaires that have many items require a lot of effort from users. We solved this problem by extracting and modeling key questionnaire items for classification using decision tree analysis. We applied this method to the classification of motorcycle users based on emotion evaluation, and we conducted type estimation. As a result, we developed a method to perform type estimation with a small number of items. The accuracy of the type estimation model was 0.85. In addition, types classified with this method retained the Kansei information of the original rider types, indicating the method’s high validity.