We present an experimental study on the influence of colour and spatial position in the assessment of boundaries in occluded surfaces. Subjects were asked to mark the place that they judged to be the location of a boundary between two differently coloured parts of a vertical rectangle partially occluded by a horizontal rectangle. Besides the use of eight pairs of colours, the position of the occluder was randomly changed resulting in 13 possible sizes of the coloured parts. The same colours were set for half of the time on the lower part of the vertical rectangle, and for half on the upper part, so as to verify whether changing the colour location would give rise to measurable effects. Results show that amodal completion is influenced not only by spatial cues but also by colour.

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The reliability and validity of a screening test called the D-CAT (Digit Cancellation Test) were evaluated across two studies. The D-CAT was developed to provide a highly practical and user-friendly assessment of various aspects of prefrontal cortex functioning, including information processing speed, the ability to focus attention, and executive functioning. Participants perform the D-CAT by deleting given target numbers on a sheet of randomly arranged possibilities. In Study 1, the reliability of the D-CAT was evaluated using a test-retest paradigm. Reasonably high correlations between scores on the two test sessions were obtained. In Study 2, construct validity was examined using a sample of participants with traumatic brain injury. TBI participants showed significantly lower D-CAT performance than age and education level matched healthy controls. On the basis of these findings, the D-CAT can be regarded as a reliable and valid screening test for attentional functioning.

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We conducted an experimental study of an English-experience program in which children regularly engaged in English-language activities in a Japanese elementary school over the course of 3 years. Three groups of children (first, third, and fifth graders upon joining the project) participated. The children engaged in Japanese and English aural digit-span tests in the first, second, and third years of the program. Results showed that the children’s digit-span performance in English improved dramatically during their 3-year participation and that the increase was larger than that in Japanese. This finding was most pronounced in children in the middle group, and was discussed in terms of total exposure time to spoken English, the amount of after-school English activities, and the sensitive period hypothesis of a second language acquisition. We concluded that the English-activities program employed in this study was effective in facilitating the acquisition of phonological forms of English among Japanese students in elementary school.

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By using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), the current study tested a hypothesis that high self-esteem increases spontaneous attention to positive information and influences negativity bias, defined as greater attention to negative information than positive information. Participants were asked to judge the pleasantness of positive and negative trait words infrequently presented in a sequence of neutral words. Compared to positive trait words, negative trait words elicited larger N2 amplitudes, thought to be elicited by a mismatch between the expectation and stimuli presented; this tendency was more extreme in individuals with a mindset associated with positive feelings and thinking, as measured by self-esteem, self-relatedness to positive trait words, and frequency of positive emotions in daily life. In contrast, no differences were found between the emotional words at the P3 amplitude, due to the set of stimuli being manipulated so that the emotional words were similar in arousal.

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Japanese women suffer domestic violence by their significant male other but by cultural tradition lack the necessary support which relegates in myth. Members of the Japanese community both at home and abroad are no exception. Domestic violence in Japan is in fact committed for purposes of control by one partner of the other. Subsequently domestic violence is a problem which appears non-existent in the Japanese community at the expense of its victims. Real life contradictions, pertaining to domestic violence events among the Japanese are sustained not only by tradition but limited discourse as well. Therefore, accounts of domestic violence among the Japanese necessitate investigation of the pathology where it occurs regardless of culture, shame or demographic category.

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