The effects of smoking on the function of frontal lobe in middle- and elderly-Japanese community dwellers were examined. The participants were 477 healthy individuals aged from 40 to 86 years old (the mean was 63 years old). The letter fluency test to measure verbal executive function and the D-CAT to measure information processing speed and sustained attention were used as the measures of cognitive function which reflects prefrontal cortex function. Analyses including age and years of education as covariates indicated that the intensity of smoking tended to influence digit cancellation performances and letter fluency performance. These findings suggest that smoking may exert a deleterious long-term effect on cognitive function.

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Elementary school students tend to produce single solutions for math problems that require two or more solutions. To generate multiple solutions, students must be aware of the existence of multiple solutions to math problems that require them, and then think of multiple solutions. This study examined whether learning experiences that enabled fourth- and fifth-grade students to think of multiple solutions subsequently increased the spontaneous production of multiple solutions to math problems that required them. The results of Investigation 1 indicated that students could spontaneously arrive at multiple solutions immediately after the learning experience, but 6 days later most returned to producing a single solution. The results of Investigation 2 indicated that students could reproduce multiple solutions 3 days after the learning experience, if they were alerted to the existence of multiple solutions. These results suggest that while learning experience increases the likelihood of producing multiple solutions, students tend to stop considering the possibility of multiple solutions existing.

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A broad collection of illusions belonging to the Zöllner and the Poggendorff families, including new variants — in particular, tilted and tilting squares — are examined in the light of two possible formal principles : a principle of regression to right angles (RRA) and a principle of “orthogonal expansion”, which is a perceptual expansion of the extent perpendicularly to the inducing lines. The domains of validity of the two principles are compared. We propose that RRA is more pertinent when the target line is explicitely present and makes real intersections with the inducing lines. Orthogonal expansion can produce RRA as a side-effect. It would be more pertinent when there are several parallel or nearly parallel inducing lines, and it does not require the presence of a real target. Both principles may be grounded on neurophysiological mechanisms. Orientation detectors would influence each other in the orientation domain, generating RRA and accounting for the illusions of the Poggendorff family. They would also influence each other in the extent domain, generating orthogonal expansion, and accounting for the illusions of the Zöllner family.

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In this study, we used single kanji that possess optional rendering for investigating the automatic phonological activations in reading. The evidence for early automatic phonological processing in reading Japanese kanji was based on the studies employing two-character compound words or single characters in sentences. In these cases, kanji have unique phonology or rendering, although almost all kanji possess plural phonology or optional rendering. Such differences in phonology are the most critical for reading Japanese kanji. Therefore, the proposal of each phonological process should not be applied to the kanji reading system. We investigated the automatic phonological activations in reading with different SOAs (90, 260, 450, and 900 ms) using a similar paradigm of Perfetti and Zhang (1995). We found phonological activations in the semantic judgment, but not semantic activations in the phonological judgment on all SOA. In conclusion, the phonology is an automatic process even in reading single kanji.

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The study examined the possible pathways by which locus of control influenced the relationship between workplace policies and work-family conflict. Initially, supportive workplace policies were predicted to be negatively correlated with work-family conflict. In a sample of 142 Malaysian employees combining work and family, results of the regression analyses showed that after controlling for demographic variables and locus of control, workplace policies were not related to conflict. More importantly, however, the results showed that locus of control had both direct and moderator effects on the relationship between workplace policies and work-family conflict. No mediation effect was found. The implications of these findings were discussed with respect to the literature on personality and workplace policies within the work-family linkage.

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