Humans can perceive constant lightness, even when the illumination environment changes. Lightness perception has been the subject of vision research for many years, and luminance contrast with surroundings was traditionally believed to determine lightness perception. However, several studies have reported reverse contrast phenomena, which demonstrate the shortcomings of theories solely based on immediate contrast. To explain wide lightness/brightness phenomena, two theories have been proposed and are widely accepted to date: namely, the anchoring theory and spatial filtering models. Both can explain reverse contrasts and many lightness illusions, but they continue to exhibit certain weaknesses in the rigor and interpretability of the models. Recent studies suggest novel pathways in this research field. For example, Markov illuminance and reflectance (MIR) is a new computational model that is intuitively understandable and can rigorously account for lightness illusions. The framework of MIR also flexibly welcomes model modifications, which demonstrates its high potential for future developments. Although lightness perception is a classic topic of vision research, the introduction of novel computational methods put forward the possibility of new developments in this research field.

Students in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world must develop different competencies, based on school education, for an inclusive and sustainable future. In this study, we investigated the role of school counseling in developing and supporting social and emotional skills as a competency. First, we reviewed research on social and emotional skills development and modern school education trends. Second, we reviewed international studies on school counselors’ roles and practical activities for developing and supporting students’ social and emotional skills in the United States. Finally, we discussed the current status and future challenges facing school counseling in Japan. Promoting school counseling practice and research to develop and support students’ social and emotional skills is crucial. Moreover, professional standards and competencies for Japanese school counselors must be established. Training and educational systems that are based on research and evidence must be available for school counselors’ professional development to improve and support student’s social and emotional skills.

A growing body of evidence indicates that students can learn successfully by teaching, even when they do not receive any training in teaching skills or have substantial guidance on how to teach. To explain why acting as a teacher in one’s own way works effectively, this paper develops the role theory of peer tutoring and proposes a role hypothesis for learning by teaching. This hypothesis consists of three basic postulates. First, students have some teacher-role expectations in their long-term memory. Second, students who are assigned to the role of teacher have an awareness of being a teacher, which activates their teacher-role expectations. Third, the students are induced to enact the role of teacher in accordance with the activated teacher-role expectations. Their teacher-role enactment involves the effective processing of to-be-taught information to varying degrees, thereby fostering their learning. The findings of research on learning by preparing to teach or teaching are reviewed to assess the validity of the role hypothesis. Finally, some directions for future research are discussed.

Mental representations of musical regularities such as tonal regularities (e.g., musical scale and rule of functional harmony in Western tonal music) are considered sustained representations that apply beyond specific tunes. Behavioral and neuroscience studies have shown that tonal representations cause schematic expectancies in listeners. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) with high temporal resolutions are used to measure differences between violations and nonviolations of expectancies as the neural correlates of tonal expectancy. This paper reviews ERP studies and discusses the information processing content reflected in ERPs (e.g., early right anterior negativity, mismatch negativity). Future directions and remaining issues on the use of electrophysiological measures to understand tonal expectancy processing are also discussed.

Since the last century, film and television series have become popular media. The experience of getting emotionally involved with and fully concentrating on films or dramas has been described with terms such as “narrative engagement,” “immersion,” “narrative aesthetic absorption,” and “transportation” and has been studied by numerous researchers. Concepts have been defined and models have been developed to explain how audiences immerse themselves in films, using different approaches, including narrative experience and multisensory integration perspectives, thereby resulting in the different emphases of these models. The purpose of this study was to review the definitions of engagement in films and the cognitive process models for viewing narrative video works. Experimental studies that investigated these models—specifically, the relationship between sensory information in films and immersion—are also reviewed. Future directions for research on narrative films are suggested; in particular, the possibility of integrating models of cognitive process when viewing narrative films.