Homophone usage was compared between speaking and writing across two sets of experiments. In the first set of studies 101 introductory students talked into a video camera about an emotional attitudinal issue – once in a way that supported their view and another time that was opposite to their view. In a different session, 44 different students performed the same task but wrote their views on paper. In the second set of studies, individuals interacted with a person whom they had never met either orally in person (N=62) or on a computer chat system where they typed to one another (N=124). Similar amounts of homophones were used across the two verbal processes, although more high frequency homophones were used in speaking than in writing. These results suggest that phonological processing do play a major role in writing.

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Two studies were conducted to examine developmental emergence of the infants’ ability to respond to the other’s intention that cannot be observed from the surface of the act, adapting the behavioral re-enactment procedure developed by Meltzoff (1995). In Study 1, as a part of the questionnaire, we asked 156 caretakers to test their infants with the modified and simplified version of a re-enactment procedure. In Study 2, on the basis of the finding of Study 1, we directly tested 33 infants younger than ones tested in Meltzoff (1995) and confirmed that 15-17month olds could respond to the other’s intention. The agreement of results between these different procedures suggested validity of the procedure used in Study 1. This procedure might work as a serviceable tool for the preparative study, which opens the possibility to use it as a part of test batteries for assessing infants’ development in broad age.

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The present study aimed to examine to what extent an English word ignored is processed. The subjects were required to name the category of a target word, ignoring a distracting word. Although the English and Japanese words used in the present study were similar in sound, they were different in script. The results showed that inhibition was produced in categorizing a Japanese target word even when an English word was used as a distracting word. This inhibition was not produced in the previous similar study using ordinary words (Ikeda, 1993). The results of the present study suggested an English word ignored is automatically phonetically processed.

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We tested the two-process model of spatial localization (Adam, Ketelaars, Kingma, & Hoek, 1993) by measuring accuracy and precision of localization performance in three stimulus conditions: (i) no-saccade — observers were to maintain gaze on the fixation mark while target appeared for 1 s, (ii) saccade to on-target — they had to quickly saccade to and fixate on target remaining on for 1 s, and (iii) saccade to off-target — they had to quickly saccade to the target appeared for 150 ms. Observers’ task was to adjust position of a mouse cursor manually so that its position corresponds to the perceived position of the target. Results with six observers are consistent with the model suggesting localization performance to be mediated by memory-guided saccade for brief target and visually guided saccade for long duration target. The results further suggest that the memory-guided saccade provides relatively less accurate and precise information for localization and is a function of target eccentricity.

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We examined the role of the phonological loop in task switching performance in a prevalently used research paradigm, that is, the alternating runs paradigm. This paradigm basically requires participants to alternate tasks on every second trial (i.e., AABBAABB). In this study, participants were required to alternate the letter and numerical decision tasks in cue-present and cue-absent conditions under control, articulatory suppression and foot tapping conditions. The results showed that error rates were larger and reaction times were longer in the articulatory suppression condition than in the control and tapping conditions for both switch and nonswitch trials in two cue conditions. These findings indicate that the phonological loop contributes to task performance not only in the switching trials but also in situations where the maintenance of task sequence information is required.

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Biggs’ presage-product-process model provided a theoretical framework for modeling the observed interrelationships among gender, age, self-efficacy, proactive attitude, locus of control, academic experiences, knowledge orientation, learning approach, and self-reported academic ability in a sample of 120 Hong Kong graduate students of education (M.Ed. students). Gender and locus of control were found not to have any significant direct or indirect effects on self-reported academic ability. Self-efficacy, academic experiences, and learning approach had direct positive effects on self-reported academic ability, while the effects of age and proactive attitude on self-reported academic ability were indirect through one or more of the process variables which in turn had either direct or indirect effects on self-reported academic ability. The final path model, minus gender and locus of control, fit the data well, had good predictive power, and suggested that age, self-efficacy and proactive attitude could prove useful for identifying part-time M.Ed. students most likely to succeed in their studies.

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