In the present review, we argue that the perceptual system has developed functionally specialized skills for letter perception through extensive reading experiences, thereby leading to optimal reading behavior. Reading experiences provide the skill to efficiently detect individual letters in a string without interfering with spatially neighboring ones. Through reading experiences, children acquire the skill to perceive letters analytically rather than holistically. Despite accumulating reading experiences, letters are constantly categorized at a basic level. Through reading experiences, the skills to adapt to font and orientation regularities of letters in a text are acquired. Furthermore, these experiences foster the skill to temporarily inhibit the active visual code of a recently perceived letter and thereby protect currently progressing letter processing from interfering with temporally neighboring letters. Functionally specialized skills of letter perception are built into the perceptual system and contribute to automaticity in fluent reading. The functional specialization of letter perception can be regarded as a manifestation of perceptual learning that adapts to properties of the external environment unique to reading and follows internal rules regarding reading behavior.

Therapist self-disclosure in psychotherapy has traditionally been regarded as something to be avoided. This trend has recently changed: some researchers suggest the efficacy of therapist self-disclosure in therapy. Owing to these results, the focus of the debates has shifted from whether a therapist should self-disclose to the quantitative aspect of self-disclosure in western countries. By contrast, therapist self-disclosure is rarely addressed directly as a research topic in Japan. Therefore, the purpose of the paper was to overview recent research on therapist self-disclosure and to describe the advantages and challenges of therapist self-disclosure in psychotherapy. We begin by reviewing previous research on the definition, type, frequency, purpose, and effects of therapist self-disclosure. We then discuss practical and ethical considerations for the appropriate use of therapist self-disclosure as a therapeutic intervention. The results clarify the trend of therapist self-disclosure during psychotherapy and at the same time identify future issues in therapist self-disclosure.

The final product of text comprehension is a mental representation that reflects the overall meaning of the written text, which is termed “the situation model.” When new information is input from the text, it is integrated with the existing representation and prior knowledge. As a result, the representation is updated to incorporate the newly encoded information. However, if the new information renders past knowledge inaccurate or unreliable, readers need to modify the knowledge stored in their memory. This paper focuses on the process by which a coherent representation of the situation described in the text is constructed. First, I provide an overview of the major theoretical frameworks related to the construction of a situation model, and then discuss the RI-Val model and event-centered theory as advanced theories for updating the situation model. Second, I discuss issues related to the verification process, including the outdating of old information, failure to verify text information, and the revision of existing knowledge. Finally, I address remaining issues and future developments.