The current study investigated the effects of gambling-irrelevant positive emotions and gambling-irrelevant perceived luck on gambling behavior. Participants performed a Game of Dice Task(GDT) comprising 18 trials. Their emotional states and perceived luck in relation to the game were assessed before the first trial and, subsequently, after every trial. In an effort to trigger their emotions, participants were shown film clips before performing the GDT; perceived luck was induced through “lucky” draws for which, unbeknown to the participants, the results were controlled. The results indicated that participants among whom positive emotions and perceived luck were induced, gambled more recklessly after winning consistently, rather than losing. Further, after initially gambling with seemingly even chances of winning, participants gambled less recklessly, despite their induction with both positive emotions and perceived good luck. However, after reckless gambling, positive emotions and perceived good luck had no significant effect on subsequent gambling behavior.

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This study developed the Alexithymia Scale for Adolescents (ASA), based on previous studies, and aimed to clarify the effects of grade and gender on alexithymic tendencies during junior high school (aged 12–15 years). The results of confirmatory factor analysis and the Cronbach's alpha coefficients for the subscales revealed that the model with the following three original factors showed the best fit: difficulty identifying feelings (DIF), difficulty describing feelings (DDF), and externally-oriented thinking (EOT). Analysis of ASA data for 1 241 junior high school students (647 boys and 594 girls)revealed the following: 1) The mean ASA score was relatively high (M=53.92, SD=9.60) in comparison with previous adult studies. 2) The overall effect of grade was significant(p<.05). 3) First-grade students scored lower than did second-(d=.19) and third-(d=.16)grade students. 4) Girls had significantly higher DIF scores than did boys (p<.01, d=.24). These results imply that Japanese junior high school students experience difficulty with emotion regulation in daily life.

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In computer-mediated communication, the lack of nonverbal cues such as facial expression, tone of voice, gestures leads to difficulties in communicating emotional states. Emoticons and pictograms are visual cues suggestive of facial expression or emotion and have been recently used as nonverbal surrogates in computer-mediated communication. The present study investigated whether and how visual cues (emoticons or pictograms) influence emotional communication in mobile text-messaging that conveys the following emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, or anxiety. The results showed that visual cues depicting a smile facilitate the communication of happiness, irrespective of the type of cue. The communication of anger was also facilitated by a pictogram depicting this emotion, but the intensity of sadness was relieved by a crying face pictogram. In the case of anxiety, visual cues had no effect on emotional communication. The rated degree of emotion differed between pictograms which are converted according to the mapping table but have different appearances. Furthermore, we found that the colors of pictograms facilitate emotional communication. These findings help understanding of the effective transmission of emotional states in text-messaging on mobile phones.

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Individuals with autism spectrum disorder have difficulties recognizing emotional information, especially from facial expressions. The present study investigated facial expression recognition ability among 17 children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder and 26 typically developing children. Three facial expression tasks were used: the Eyes Task, the Morphed Faces Task, and the Movie Stills Task with and without faces. Children were asked to adapt emotional words for stimuli (eye stimuli and emotional scenes) or rate emotional intensity from facial expressions. Results showed that children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder had difficulties perceiving subtle fear, complex emotions, and using contextual information appropriately in the absence of faces. These findings suggest that difficulty in recognizing emotional information from not only facial expressions but also contextual cues could provide a basis for understanding to social deficits among children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder.

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This paper reviews the research trend of reappraisal and the issues it confronts, with emphasis on the subtypes of the strategy. First, the paper reviews the concept of reappraisal within Gross's process-model. Then, it presents the emotion regulation effects of reappraisal and its influences on psychological well-being. After that, the paper addresses the controversial points of the past research that treated reappraisal as a single strategy. In doing so, the need of the perspective from the subtypes of reappraisal is discussed, and some studies focusing on the subtypes of reappraisal will be reviewed. Finally, the paper concludes with some problems in the preceding studies of reappraisal and discussions on desirable direction for future research.

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