The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of imitating or observing other's head movements on recognition of valenced words from the perspective of the mirror neurons hypothesis. We expected the occurrence of the 'Conceptual-motor compatibility' that participants who are induced to nod or observe other's nodding are more likely to recognize positive words whereas participants who are induced to shake their heads or observe other shaking the head are more likely to recognize negative words. However, our experiment failed to find it. However, we found the effects of the compatibility between head movements and activity valence of words. These findings suggest how the conceptual-motor compatibility on memory depends on whether words have valence compatible with some context behind the movements.

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The purpose of this study is to examine that people seem to display implicit knowledge of Bayesian principles even if they do not display any explicit knowledge. We conducted two experiments replicating one performed by Gluck & Bower's (1998). In Experiment 1, participants were given 3 sessions of 100 symbol strings of 4 bits, were required to choose one of three categories they thought the strings related to, and were given feedback on the correct category. In Experiment 2, the procedure was almost the same as Experiment 1 except for the followings: (a) a training setting (replaced the strings and the categories with fictitious clients' conditions and effective psychotherapies respectively), and (b) the grades of students belonging to the psychology course. Overall, both experiments showed that the proportion of the participants' choices was getting closer to the true probabilities (i.e., Bayesian probabilities) not only with sessions but also with the grade going up. These findings suggest that existing knowledge has a facilitating effect on probability matching of psychotherapy selection without explicit memories of the frequencies of string-category or condition-psychotherapy combinations.

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[in Japanese]

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Previous studies have revealed that the bereaved family of crime are deeply hurt by judicial dissection. In order to control the psychological stress, they tend to adopt a strategy to focus on procedural problems in judicial dissection and propose measures for improvement. However, the present study, in which we collected detailed narratives from a member of traffic accident bereaved family with an interview method, suggested that the dissection itself is extremely strong damage to the bereaved family, and that introduction of another inspection method to investigate the cause of death replacing dissection is necessary. Based on the analysis of the interview, we proposed a new method called Ai (autopsy imaging) and discussed the benefits.

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Humor is defined as emotion of mirth that is elicited by the cognition of incongruity that is funny and laughable. Previous studies have pointed out that there is a relationship between autism spectrum traits and humor, but no studies have examined the relationship between autism spectrum traits and the aggressiveness for laughter, and the kind of characteristics of autism spectrum traits affecting the aggressiveness. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between autism spectrum traits and the aggressiveness for laughter. Results showed that social skills in autism spectrum traits affected the aggressiveness for laughter. However, attention switching, detail orientation, communication, and imagination in autism spectrum traits did not affect. These findings are discussed from the viewpoint of the interests in others.

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The purpose of this study was to develop a new questionnaire to assess the burden expressive suppression for Japanese (J-BES) based on the BES by Niermeyer, Franchow & Suchy (2016). In this study 1, 465 upper-middle and older adults filled 20 questionnaire items and two factors, social suppression and personal suppression, were identified by the factor analysis and selected 8 items as J-BES. In study 2, possible relations between J-BES score and D-CAT (representing attention related prefrontal cortex function) and Logical Memory test (representing memory related frontal-temporal cortex function) scores were examined. High J-BES score group participants showed worse D-CAT scores than low J-BES score group participants. These findings seem to support that J-BES has a certain level of test validity.

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[in Japanese]

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We reviewed experimental studies examining inversion or composite effects to understand the holistic processing of faces. Early studies reported a shift from analytic to holistic face processing with age. Young children's inability to use holistic information was believed to explain their inferior performance in facial processing. However, recent research has revealed that even 3-year-olds and infants show sensitivity to holistic information, similarly to adults. We discuss methodological problems of these studies, including the lack of whole-face images in the stimuli tested. Previous studies commonly used facial stimuli created by cutting out only an internal area of a face, or by excluding external areas (i.e., hair). These manipulations have caused an overestimation of children痴 ability to identify and recognize faces. Finally, we present a new approach for clarifying developmental changes in face processing. Young children have a tendency to process a whole visual area, including areas that are inappropriate for accurate identification of faces (i.e., external areas), and have an inability to limit visual processing to useful internal areas and facial components.

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The purpose of this paper is to discover whether findings before the end of the 1990s about Japanese views are still applicable to females today. To this end, various literatures about cultural self-construals are examined, and Takata et al.'s scales and Takata's sub-categories (Takata, Omoto and Seike, 1996) are referred to in some detail. The subjects used as data for this study are 147 females in the Kansai area, Japan, and their age range is from their 20's to their 70's. The survey's results seem to agree with previously-noted Japanese characteristics which were concluded from studies of Japanese males and females together.

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