This study examined the moderating role of rape myth acceptance (RMA) and belief in a just world (BJW) on victim blame attribution in either an alleged stranger or date rape case. As hypothesized, RMA and BJW were both significant predictors of victim blame behavior for the Japanese college students who participated in the study. Further, Japanese participants blamed the victim of date rape more than the victim of the stranger rape. The similarities and differences between findings from this study and those from Western countries are discussed.

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This study examined perceptual distortion of visual illusions in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and age-, sex- and IQ-matched typically developing children to determine whether local bias exists in low-level visual processing in ASD as the weak central coherence (WCC) theoretical account predicts. To explore whether higher-level contextual information can be integrated with low-level information in ASD, the perception with and without perspective cues was also examined. The children with ASD succumbed to illusions to a lesser degree than did the comparison group, and the degree of perceptual distortion was negatively correlated with Block Design score, a marker of WCC. The presence of perspective cues did not increase perceptual distortion among both groups to a statistically significant degree. The results support the WCC account suggesting abnormalities in integrating visual information in low-level processing in individuals with ASD when they perceived illusory figures.

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Previous studies have suggested that emotional facial expression has a facilitative effect on attention orienting by gaze cues depending on the anxiety level; however, evidence has been inconclusive. We investigated this issue by presenting fearful and neutral faces with straight, right, and left gaze as cues. Forty-six healthy participants were asked to detect a peripheral target following the cue. After the experiment, their state and trait anxiety levels were evaluated. The reaction time under the valid condition was shorter for fearful than for neutral faces only in the high state anxiety group. Regression analyses showed a positive relationship between the effect of attention orienting by fearful gaze and state anxiety. These results indicate that fearful gaze facilitates attention orienting compared to neutral gaze as participants’ state anxiety levels increase.

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This study investigated the bilingual phonological processes with bi-scriptal readers of Korean language, Korean-Chinese. Three types of same-different matching between the prime and target were compared. The main result was that the condition of semantically not related but phonologically related (S-P+; e.g., “水/su/[a homophone of the prime has the same meaning as the target] and 손/son/”) was slower than the condition of the condition of semantically and phonological not related (S-P-). The critical point was on whether the semantically related word with the target (i.e., 手/su/) can be activated by the phonological form of the prime. These results indicate that phonological access is nonselectively activated in Korean-Chinese bilingual processing. The implication for bilingual phonological recoding was discussed.

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The aim of this study is to investigate whether there is a developmental difference in recognizing acts of harm through action and inaction (commission and omission). Thirty-nine children who were 4- to 6-year-olds judged tasks with acts of commission or acts of omission based on first-order mental states. Participants were more likely to give correct responses to mental state questions and incorrect ones to moral judgment questions than the reverse pattern. However, the difference between commissions or omissions did not significantly affect the correct responses in any age group. These results suggest that there are no developmental differences in recognizing acts of commissions and omissions based on the understanding of mental states.

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