The purpose of the present research was to examine the present state of Japanese university students' intercultural understanding in order to obtain some implications for intercultural education in university. The results revealed the present state of Japanese university students' intercultural understanding was not monolithic. On the one hand, some attached importance to intercultural understanding, on the other hand, others slighted or resisted intercultural understanding. Moreover, it was clarified that there were differences on understanding toward social minorities and stereotypic understanding between female and male university students. Based on these results, future direction and tasks on intercultural education in university were investigated.

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The purpose of this research was to clarify the relation between falls self-efficacy and physical , cognitive factors in the community-dwelling elderly (mean = 66.6years old, N = 291, male = 112, female = 179).The measure of 16 falls self-efficacy items was consisted of Japan version of FES and external environment questionnaire items when elderly people going out. Multiple regression analyses for falls self-efficacy and other variables revealed in male that the following variables were significantly related to falls self-efficacy ; knee joint pain, fall history, and stride and in female that knee joint pain, fall history, the sense of balance, stride and low back pain. These results suggest the importance of emphasizing pain control in male. Further, in female, to conduct pain control, increase attention and mobility are important to improve self-efficacy leading to the prevention of falls.

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[in Japanese]

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Previous research has reported that people sometimes try to concentrate their attention on something else to suppress unwanted thoughts. This strategy is called focused-distraction. The purpose of present study was to investigate the effects of focused-distraction on the frequency of intrusive thoughts. Sixteen participants were asked to suppress their thoughts about targets and perform a memory task at the same time, to simply suppress the thoughts, and to think about anything they like. The results showed that participants tried to focus their attention on the memory task in the suppression with memory task condition, and they experienced less intrusive thoughts in the suppression with memory task condition than in the simple suppression condition. These results suggest that focused-distraction is useful for suppressing unwanted thoughts, and people spontaneously use focused-distraction depending on the situation. The necessity of further investigation regarding focused-distraction is discussed.

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In this paper, a theoretical hypothesis that public works would have deterrence effects of deflation under the situation that deflation-gap exists was tested empirically. For testing this hypothesis empirically, we used macro-economics data in Japan since 1991 when the huge deflation-gap was brought by the collapse of the babble economy. As a result, we found that 1,000 billions yen's public works increases the GDP deflator by 0.2-0.8 % and increases nominal GDP by about 2,430 billions yen - 4,550 billions yen. This results support the hypothesis that public works would have deterrence effects of deflation under the situation that deflation-gap exists. It was also found that the deflation deterrence effects by the public works was larger than that by the in-crease export.

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[in Japanese]

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This study examined the relationship between Hegel's concept of "alienation" from a community and Ortega's concept of the "masses" in order to explore the empirical implication of the former concept in our society. According to philosophical discussion, it is supposed that Hegel's concept of "alienation" has a positive relationship with Ortega's concept of "Masses." This hypothesis was tested in the survey with a questionnaire (n = 400), by examining the relationship between the alienation scale and the vulgarity scale which were developed based on Hegel's theory of alienation and Ortega's theory of the masses, respectively. The obtained data showed that the sense of alienation from four communities (family, region, organization, and state) was positively related with the autistic factor which constituted the vulgarity scale. The result implied that the two concepts are associated with each other. It also provided the evidence of validity of the alienation scale. Finally, implications of the present result were discussed.

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Since Posner and Cohen (1984), inhibition of return (IOR) is thought to be a mechanism that prevents to allocate attention to previous attended location. In contrast, Pratt, Spalek, and Bradshaw (1999) proposed that IOR was due to the facilitation effect on the path of attention (attentional momentum hypothesis). This study examined whether attentional momentum caused IOR or not. In Experiment 1, robust IOR was found, but facilitation effect by attentional momentum was found at a limited condition. In Experiment 2, IOR was found again, but facilitation effect shown in Experiment 1 disappeared. These results suggest that attentional momentum is not a reason of IOR.

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This study examined the relationships between schoolchildren's attachment to guardians and their safety actions. It also examined the effectiveness of using e-learning system to facilitate guardian's participation in safety education. One-hundred and eight schoolchildren (34 second-grade, 35 forth-grade, and 39 fifth-grade) and their guardians participated in this study. Safety educations were conducted at school by using e-learning system, which linked both school and home. Guardians could see the materials and their own child's answer in safety education at school through the internet. Schoolchildren answered the questionnaire before and after the education. Participations of guardians to the study were recorded by e-learning system. The results showed that before the safety educations, the relationships between schoolchildren's attachment to guardians and their safety actions were noticed only at fifth-grade schoolchildren. However, the expected relationships were noticed at all three grades after the educations. The ratios of guardian's participations were ranged from 11 % to 40 %. Developmental stages and procedure of re-study might affect the result of schoolchildren. Also, teacher's attitude toward guardians, or schoolchildren's motivation might affect the ratio of guardian's participations.

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Resilience has been defined as a dynamic process of maintaining positive adaptation and effective coping strategies in the face of adversity. The aim of this study was to find the factors comprising resilience in Japanese older adults. We asked experts in medical and psychological care for older adults to rate the capacity for recovery and rebound of psychological health after a challenge of the earthquake occurring in eastern Japan in association with items respectively. As a result, 14 items were chosen to construct the resilience for older adults and three factors were identified: (1). Self-control; (2). Positive interpretation (interpret the present to a positive direction); (3). Acceptance of self and life. All these factors had a high degree of internal consistency for Cronbach's alpha reliability for the scale. Moreover, the 3rd factor, Acceptance, was more associated with the resilience for older adults, compared to the other two factors.

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