Previous studies have shown that behavioral synchronization with others positively affects various psychological and behavioral variables. However, no consistent view has been given on the effects of synchronization, as different researchers tend to use different indicators. In light of this, the purpose of this study was to comprehensively examine the effects of synchronization by using multiple psychological and behavioral indicators that have been shown to be associated with synchronization, as dependent variables. We set up conditions in which the upper arm motion was synchronous and asynchronous between two participants who maintained a controlled gaze. The results showed that synchronization of behavior with others was not an effect and not a mediated effect by psycho-logical variables; however, it had a direct effect on behavioral indicators. Specifically, compared with the asynchronous condition, the synchronous condition resulted in closer interpersonal distance between participants and greater cooperation with others in the prisoner’s dilemma game.

Our goal is to promote brain health through “bSports” (brain-Sports), a form of social sport competition using brain-machine interfaces. As the core technology, we have been developing an electroencephalography-based cognitive training system, “Neurotrainer,” using event-related potential as a virtual “mind switch” to control games. Here, we aimed to assess the performance of the Neurotrainer under competitive conditions between players. Fifteen pairs of healthy adults, including older people with tendency of degrading motor functions, were involved in a one-hour session of 4 games. Each player activated the mind switch to select one of eight pictograms to control his/her robot avatar for its desired action. All players regardless of age performed well at the level of about 85% success rate and reported that they had fun with our body-free technologies. These results suggest that bSports is an effective cognitive training and social activity that can be appreciated by people across all generations.

This paper proposes a new business search model (Mirror-method) using IP landscape (also called “Patent Landscape”). The purpose of the Mirror-method is to enable even general employees who belong to the intellectual property department of a company to search for new business themes quickly and easily. The Mirror-method has two features: 1) focusing on cited applications from non-competitors, and 2) focusing on the company’s core competence. As a pilot study, applying to searching the cosmetics business, which was new business for FUJIFILM in 2000s, this paper shows the Mirror-method works effectively.

In a virtual reality (VR) environment, users often control virtual bodies. While having a body is likely to promote a feeling of presence, does an invisible body make users lose the feeling? Using a head mounted display and 360-degree camera shooting pseudo image, we constructed a situation where participants can walk “with an invisible body.” The camera was moved in accordance with the participant’s walking and was hung at the height of the participant’s line of sight, so the participants felt walking in the virtual space freely. We tested a feeling of presence in the proprietary developed VR with/without obstacle in the image and found that the feeling of presence was maintained even in the situation when they virtually “transmitted” the obstacle. Our findings suggest that consistent somatosensory-vestibular-visual stimuli during walking are accompanied with the feeling of presence even when a body was not presented.

This paper reports on the results of a literature review and text-mining analysis conducted to understand how the kawaii emotion had been expressed in Japanese. The Japanese term kawaii can be translated to English as lovable, cute, pretty, and sweet comprehensively. In Japanese, the kawaii emotion had long been expressed using different words, many of which have multiple other meanings. In addition, some words that had been used to express the kawaii emotion took on new meanings. The words that had been exclusively used to refer to the kawaii emotion are megushi, utsukushi, rotashi, kahayushi, and shiorashi. In modern Japanese, nuances such as ‘sweet’ and ‘pitiful’ were removed from the concept of kawaii whereas others such as ‘smiling’ were added.

Only a few evaluation has been reported on both design impression and usability of commodity containers. In this survey, we evaluated both the design impression and usability of an insect repellent spray container. In the design impression, the spray containers were evaluated on a 7-point scale with adjective pairs. As a result of factor analysis, three factors were extracted: factor 1 favorability, factor 2 trustworthy and friendliness, and factor 3 softness and gentleness. In the usability, the grip comfort were evaluated on a 5-point scale using the Likert scale, along with measurement of the pressure applied to the hand when gripping the spray container. As a result of the correlation analysis of grip comfort and grip pressure, we found that the thumb and the upper part of the palm affects the grip comfortability. By evaluating both design impression and usability, it can lead to a better container assessment.

The purpose of the present study was to examine whether art students would evaluate paintings based on the economic dimension of value (EDV). Art students (N = 193) were asked to rate 14 paintings (including seven good arts and seven bad arts selected from the Museum of Bad Art) on four scales of aesthetic evaluation. They were also asked to complete a questionnaire assessing their degree of the EDV. The results demonstrated that the EDV was related to aesthetic evaluations for both good and bad arts. These results suggest that art students with the high EDV appreciate paintings based on the EDV and focus on whether paintings would be sold.

Food quality is often considered to be the only defining factor of food value. In this study, another important aspect of food value is discussed: the social relationships which are commonly fostered by food. The latent value of curry roux for home use was investigated by studying behavior specific to eating curry. It was found that synchronization of spoons (including spoon and chopsticks) per meal time to be an indicator. It is well known that synchronization occurs when empathizing with others, suggesting that creating empathies with others during a meal is the latent value of curry. Also, text data analysis showed that curry is eaten with special and similar positive feelings by home cook and eater, compared to the other meals. These behavioral and psychological specificity supports the creation of empathy by curry.

Nagoya Cochin is one of Japan’s famous chicken breeds and was also the first domestic commercial chicken. The eggshell is a pink cherry-blossom color, with white speckles on its surface. The purpose of this study is to develop an eggshell color index for quality control to improve the commercial value. This study consists of two experiments. In the first experiment, the eggshell color of sixty eggs was measured by a colorimeter TC-8600A, and a visual evaluation using photo images of each egg was conducted by fourteen visual inspection experts. They scored on a Likert scale of five steps on four criteria: attractiveness of color, attractiveness of white speckles distribution, overall attractiveness, and preference. The relationship between the eggshell color and the visual impression was analyzed on a Hunter Lab color space. In the second experiment, a range of color variations of eggshells were generated on a screen using Adobe Photoshop, and a visual evaluation of three hundred and fifteen egg images was conducted by seven experts. It is hoped the results from both experiments will be useful for agricultural producers to develop more attractive products and increase the commercial value of Nagoya Cochin chickens.

In our first report, knowledge on dance choreography was obtained by using rough sets to determine the human cognitive evaluation structure for ballet. In this report, a study aimed at systematizing the ways movements are expressed was conducted by going over the cognitive evaluation structure of choreography, which has been implemented by choreographers based on experience. The following results were obtained by analyzing the relationship between image groups and ballet poses (physical cognitive elements): (1) 20 sets of impression words (images) were classified into three groups-expressiveness, figuration, and aesthetics-and (2) expressiveness image group was related to physical cognitive elements that comprise the spreading of the four limbs. (3) The figuration image group was related to physical cognitive elements that comprise the shape of the whole body. (4) The aesthetics image group was related to physical cognitive elements that are associated with the exaggeration of movements.

Even when a software is exclusively developed according to its design documents, User’s may still perceive the actual software being different from what was documented on the design documents. In software development project, the deviation between System Engineer and user’s perception of completed software is known as Non-fault case project. This Non-Fault Case is commonly due to User’s misinterpretation of the software design document. Nonetheless, Non-Fault Case is only identifiable upon software completion. However, it has been reported that System Engineer may have early detection of User’s misconception, which leads to Non-Fault Case. In this paper, we propose Bayesian classifier that predicts Non-Fault Case through System Engineer sensitivity during each software-design process. We have confirmed the process and data input method used for Bayesian classifier.

The quantification is required about application feeling of the skin lotion when it is designed and evaluated. In this paper, we propose a system that estimates the application feeling by temperature measurement in order to realize an objective and quantitative evaluation. We measured the temperatures on the finger-shaped sensor and the applied table during the application of the lotion. The measurements were conducted by a proposed measurement system that simulates the application movement. Seven independent features were calculated from the measured temperature waveform, and the relationship with the five application feelings was modeled by multiple regression analysis. The resulting estimation model of the application feelings showed high accuracy. Therefore, we concluded that the proposed measurement system is applicable for estimation application feeling of the skin lotion.

The present study examines the necessary factors for a Japanese firm to enter the Chinese market. From 1995-2005, the Chinese apparel market greatly attracted Japanese fashion apparel firms. However, as of 2020, there are few examples of outstanding success in the Chinese market. We used text mining to compare the views of successful business owner and consultants (commentaries) in the Chinese market. We also performed “Quantitative Content Analysis” using the free analysis software “KH Coder”. Entering the rapidly changing Chinese market is a risky and high-return business. The stylism supply, sales and financial results of products that can withstand this, especially the success of the business in the Japanese market, are prerequisites. Firms that meet this premise were rare in 2000. This is because there were few firms that satisfied the “Administrative kansei (affectivity)” was required to enter the market.

We investigated the multisensory emotion perception from humanoid-robot. In the experiment, participants were presented with video clips containing emotional colored eyes and voice (Task 1) or body gesture and voice (Task 2) of the robot, which were either congruent or incongruent in terms of emotional content (e.g., a happy body gesture paired with a sad voice on an incongruent trial). Participants were instructed to judge the emotion of the robot as either happiness or sadness. We examined the proportion of responses based on visual or auditory cues for the robot’s expression. Results showed that participants relied more on auditory cues than on the visual cues in Task 1. However, this vocal superiority was not observed in Task 2. These results suggest that the multisensory emotion perception from the robot is different whether the cues are natural or artificial. We proposed a model for multisensory emotion perception from a robot.

It is necessary to understand the Kansei evaluation structure such as impressions and preferences, in order to help designing better advertisements for music events or tourist spots. We have built a model of the relationship between color features, impressions and evaluations of music festival images based on the hierarchical Kansei model. We grouped the evaluators based on their personality traits and considered the characteristics of each group’s Kansei model. We have found that evaluations such as “like” and “fun” have a positive relationship with “cheerful” impressions, and “intense” and “noisy” impressions have a positive or a negative relationship depending on the evaluators’ personality. These results suggest that the personality effect on Kansei evaluation is larger on the higher layer than that on the lower one.

An azimuth estimation binaural model of sound image for an audio listening environment in a car cabin is proposed. To improve the estimation accuracy of this model, a gammachirp auditory filterbank was used to extract the physical characteristics related to the in-cabin audio listening environment sound image azimuth. The effectiveness of the proposed method was confirmed by its higher level of correlation between the experimental and estimated values as compared to the frequency domain binaural model.