Considering the immense damage caused by natural disasters in recent years, a reevaluation of current disaster prevention education should be regarded as a matter of urgency to ensure it is of a satisfactory standard. Assuming it to be an effective response in the event of a disaster, the current study focused on the Japanese practice of Inochi-tendenko, which means to run away independently to safety when disaster strikes while thinking solely about one’s safety, and investigated, through a web survey, teachers’ attitudes toward promoting this practice as a new approach to disaster prevention education. The results from 219 public elementary and junior high schoolteachers demonstrated that, while most teachers perceived current disaster prevention education as adequate, they were also aware that such education needed to be reformed. Also, it was observed that 52.1% of teachers knew the practice of Inochi-tendenko and generally accepted the idea of its incorporation into public disaster prevention education. Furthermore, we found that 1) an awareness of the need for reform, as an individual factor, was associated with a positive attitude towards promoting the practice of Inochi-tendenko, 2) there was a nonnegligible organizational climate effect towards positivity in promoting the practice of Inochi-tendenko, and 3) the interaction effect of these suggested that a collegial organizational climate was necessary for promoting the practice of Inochi-tendenko as a new and more adequate approach to disaster prevention education.

In this study, we investigated the hypothesis that autistic traits associated with alexithymia, when related to aggressiveness, relate to aggressive behavior. For the purpose of this study, 208 students voluntarily participated in the experiment. Their autistic traits were measured using the Autism-Spectrum Quotient, their aggressiveness was examined using the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire and the Implicit Association Test, and alexithymia traits were estimated using the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale, while aggressive behavior was assessed using the Aggressive Behavior Scale and by measuring the intensity of unpleasant noise. The results revealed that all subscales of the autism traits have a positive relationship with the alexithymia traits. The results of covariance structure analysis revealed that participants’ difficulty performing attention switching and focusing on small details was related to aggressiveness and was thus positively related to aggressive behavior. In addition, poor communication was directly and positively related to aggressive behavior, while poor social skills were directly and negatively related to aggressive behavior. However, poor imagination did not relate to aggressiveness and aggressive behavior. The coefficient alpha of focusing on local details and poor imagination was low. The relation between autistic traits and aggressive behavior was then discussed.

This study examined how using ground rules influenced recall and suggestibility to leading questions in elderly eyewitnesses. A 2 (age group: younger and older adults)×2 (ground-rule instructions: instructed and control) between-subjects factorial design was used. Participants were older adults (n＝61, Age range 65–75 years) and younger adults (n＝66, Age range 25–35 years). Participants in the ground-rule instructed group received a pre-interview explanation outlining the conversational ground rules of the interview including explicit permission for participants to say “I don’t know” when appropriate, whereas those in the control group received no such explanation or instructions. Results indicated that older adults correctly recalled fewer items under free recall than younger adults. Suggestibility to leading questions, on the other hand, was significantly higher in younger adults than in older adults. The provision of ground-rule instructions decreased the amount of incorrect recall and suggestibility to leading questions in all age groups. These results confirmed the effectiveness of the provision of ground rules in different age groups.