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Which is more critical in identification of random figures, endpoints or closures?1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The present study intended to examine the criticality of the presence of endpoints and its complementary state, the presence of closures, in early figural identification. Three experiments used a same/different judgment task for simultaneously presented pairs of random figures. Rigorous control over the selections of stimulus figures containing closures and endpoints was ensured. Latencies predicted by six explanations of figural identification (i.e. parallel and the presence of endpoint detection; parallel and closure detection; serial, exhaustive and endpoint detection; serial, exhaustive and closure detection; serial, s...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - October 26, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: FUMIO KANBE Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Meta-stereotype as an indicator of intergroup attitude: How Japanese perceive they are viewed by KoreansEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Meta-stereotype refers to individuals' predictions about how their group is viewed by an outgroup rather than their own impressions about the outgroup (i.e. other-stereotype). We posited that, because of their inferential nature, meta-stereotypes can be affected by evaluational aspects, and that being liked or disliked can evoke reciprocal feelings toward the outgroup. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether meta-stereotypes are predictive of implicitly measured attitudes toward an outgroup by focusing on the Japanese meta-stereotype of Koreans. Japanese participants answered questions about their meta- and...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - October 26, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: JIYOON KIM, TOMOKO OE Tags: Short Reports Source Type: journals

Mean recovery rate: A simple measure of recovery uncontaminated by the carryover effectEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Assessment of recovery is important for the investigation of stress but has been compounded by difficulties, in particular contamination by the carryover effect. In the present study, the mean recovery rate (MRR) was used in order to overcome this difficulty. First, the validity of the MRR was demonstrated theoretically. Second, it was demonstrated experimentally, when a comparison was made with the validity of the mean recovery per se. In the experiment, data on beat-by-beat systolic blood pressure, obtained from 18 participants before, during, and after mental arithmetic, were used as a typical sample. The implications o...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - October 26, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: YUKIHIRO SAWADA, YUICHI KATO Tags: Short Reports Source Type: journals

Perceived certainty based on verbal probability phrases: Effect of directionality and its dependence on methodEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Verbal probability phrases (e.g. "possible" or "doubtful") have a feature called "directionality" (Teigen & Brun, 1995), which focuses listeners on event occurrence or nonoccurrence. We conducted an experiment about certainty estimations based on verbal probabilities in order to examine the effect of directionality on perceived certainty. In measuring perceived certainty, we used scale-based method involving responses with a scale (e.g. 101 points' scale, 0 = unlikely to 100 = likely) and numerical method involving responses such as "50%." We found that, although the effect of directionality on perceived certainty was obse...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - October 26, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: HIDEHITO HONDA, KIMIHIKO YAMAGISHI Tags: Short Reports Source Type: journals

What is special about the index finger?: The index finger advantage in manipulating reflexive attentional shift1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We examined the efficacy of various pointing gestures in evoking viewer's attentional shifts. After viewing the gesture cue, observers quickly reported the location of a visual target. With a short cue-target delay, reaction times were generally shorter for the target at the location where gesture cues pointed, but not with a long cue-target delay. Moreover, the indexical pointing gesture produced a significantly larger cueing effect than the other gestures. Our control experiments indicated that the index-finger advantage is tightly linked to the proper morphological shape (i.e. length and position of the index finger) of...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - October 26, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: ATSUNORI ARIGA, KATSUMI WATANABE Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Nine- to 11-month-old infants' reasoning about causality in anomalous human movements1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Two habituation experiments investigated 9[ndash]11-month-old infants' reasoning about causality in anomalous human movements. During habituation, infants saw an event in which a person walked toward a stationary person behind an occluder who fell down after an interval. Then, the infants were tested with two events without the occluder: the contact event in which the first person pushed the second one to fall down and the no-contact event in which the second person fell down without any contact. In Experiment 1, in which the persons were face-to-back, infants looked at the no-contact event for a longer time, whereas in Ex...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - October 26, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: DAISUKE KOSUGI, HIRAKU ISHIDA, CHIZUKO MURAI, KAZUO FUJITA Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Predictive behavior and causal learning in animals and humans1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The ability to learn causal relationships between external events is important for animals, including human beings, in order to select appropriate predictive behavior. Historically, associative theories have claimed that the association between events is crucial, and automatic bottom-up processes play a role in achieving this goal, particularly in animals. Although associative theories could give a parsimonious explanation for predictive behavior in animals without the concept of causality, recently, several experiments have shown evidence that even rats can acquire and use causal knowledge to predict possible future event...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - September 15, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: KOSUKE SAWA Tags: Review Source Type: journals

Attachment between humans and dogsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This article discusses the biological aspects of human-dog attachment. Attachment requires the distinction of a specific figure using species-specific social cues and specific responses to the figure, brought about by neuroendocrinological homeostatic functions as well as behavioral aspects. It has been shown that dogs can distinguish a particular human figure (e.g. the owner) and exhibit specific autonomic reactions. Moreover, when dogs gaze at their owners, the latter's urinary oxytocin levels increase after the interaction. This understanding of the biological aspect of interspecies attachment suggests the possible elem...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - September 15, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: MIHO NAGASAWA, KAZUTAKA MOGI, TAKEFUMI KIKUSUI Tags: Review Source Type: journals

Contact calls: Information and social functionEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The focus of acoustic communication studies differs between birds and primates due to differences between the avian and primate social structures. Contact calls exist in almost all species independent of social structure, indicating their importance for animals. Contact calls contain various types of information about the sender. They function to keep groups cohesive or to help reunite visually separated individuals. In this review, we first describe the type of information contained in the acoustic structure of contact calls, and then we consider the function of contact calls in animals' social lives, particularly their f...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - September 15, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: NORIKO KONDO, SHIGERU WATANABE Tags: Review Source Type: journals

Marmosets as a next-generation model of comparative cognitionEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Common marmosets have traditionally been used in fields such as comparative psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and ethology, and as animal models of human disease research because of their relatively small body size, high reproductive rate, similar breeding system characteristics to those of humans, high dependency on vocal communication, and behavioral effects from drug administration that resemble those of humans. Although the animal has proved to be quite advantageous in animal model research in comparison to rodents, and has specific ecological and evolutionary characteristics that are worthy of exploration, few attem...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - September 15, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: YUMIKO YAMAZAKI, SHIGERU WATANABE Tags: Review Source Type: journals

Elephant psychology: What we know and what we would like to knowEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Although elephants are well-known and one of the most popular species among people, their behavior and cognitive abilities have not been studied very extensively. But recently, more and more researchers are becoming interested in studying their cognition, particularly their general intelligence, including causal reasoning and mirror self recognition, memory, and numerical cognition. Although genetically elephants are more closely related to the small-brained aardvarks and manatees than to primates, they hold enormous potential in their cognitive skills. Also, studying their cognition is important from the point of view of ...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - September 15, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: NAOKO IRIE, TOSHIKAZU HASEGAWA Tags: Review Source Type: journals

Overview of comparative cognitive studies of dolphins in Japan1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Dolphins live in aquatic environments that differ greatly from our terrestrial environments. Several studies have demonstrated that dolphins have complex cognitive abilities comparable to those of great apes. No comparative cognitive studies of dolphins were conducted in Japan until the mid-1990s, but several pioneering works on dolphin comparative brain studies in Japan had already implied the higher cognitive ability of dolphins by the 1940s. Research in this field is now increasing gradually. This paper provides an overview of comparative cognitive studies of dolphins conducted in Japan, in order to promote dolphin cogn...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - September 15, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: TADAMICHI MORISAKA Tags: Review Source Type: journals

Studies on the teleost brain morphology in search of the origin of cognitionEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Although it is frequently assumed that fish possess only simple brain functions, it is becoming increasingly clear that rather complex cognitive abilities are also found in fishes, in particular teleosts. Further studies in teleosts are thus expected to extend our knowledge of cognition from a comparative point of view. The anatomical substrates responsible for such cognitive abilities, however, remain almost entirely unknown in teleosts, offering little clues to understand the evolutionary history or origins of cognition based on neural grounds. Moreover, a firm conclusion on the homology of the teleostean forebrain, in p...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - September 15, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: NAOYUKI YAMAMOTO Tags: Review Source Type: journals

A perspective on the study of cognition and sociality of cephalopod mollusks, a group of intelligent marine invertebrates1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Cephalopod mollusks are found virtually everywhere throughout the world's oceans. They are highly mobile invertebrates that have evolved behavioral and morphological defenses against vertebrate predators. Unlike other mollusks, the coleoid cephalopods (octopus, cuttlefish, and squid) possess highly developed nervous systems with huge brains equivalent in size to some vertebrate brains. Cephalopod intelligence is also exhibited by their impressive memory and learning abilities. Why have cephalopods developed such huge brains and cognitive ability? One of the keys to answering this question lies in understanding the social i...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - September 15, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: YUZURU IKEDA Tags: Review Source Type: journals

Perception of neon-color spreading in squirrel monkeys1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In three experiments, we explored the perception of neon-color spreading in squirrel monkeys and compared it with that of humans. In Experiment 1, human observers were tested to confirm the effect of stimulus aspects that were controlled in a series of experiments on the neon-color effect. The strength of the neon-color effect was modulated by the width, spacing, and luminance ratio of crosshatched lines that induced neon-color spreading. In Experiment 2A, one squirrel monkey was taught to discriminate a circle from three other shapes induced by the neon-color effect under the same stimulus conditions as in Experiment 1. T...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - September 15, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: YASUO NAGASAKA, RYUZABURO NAKATA, YOSHIHISA OSADA Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Visual working memory of jungle crows (Corvus macrorhynchos) in operant delayed matching-to-sample1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We examined the capacity of visual working memory in three male jungle crows using an operant delayed matching-to-sample procedure. In the delayed matching-to-sample, each trial started with the presentation of a sample stimulus, followed by the presentation of comparison stimuli after a delay interval. The choice of the matching comparison was rewarded. Jungle crows showed a steady decline in proportion correct with increasing delay interval. The proportion correct was higher when the sample stimulus was the same in the preceding trial, suggesting that proactive interference prevented the birds from retrieving the memory ...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - September 15, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: KAZUHIRO GOTO, SHIGERU WATANABE Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Transposition of line-length discrimination in African penguins (Spheniscus demersus)1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Four penguins (Spheniscus demersus) were trained to discriminate line length in a simultaneous discrimination task. After the birds' performances reached a discrimination criterion, the reinforcement ratio was decreased to .33. After the ratio of correct trials reached .90 in three successive sessions with a partial reinforcement procedure, probe-test sessions were introduced. In the probe-test trials, untrained lines were presented paired with the trained lines. The four probe-test trials were mixed into 45 discrimination trials. In the probe-test trials, the penguins that had been trained to peck shorter lines pecked the...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - September 15, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: KAZUCHIKA MANABE, MINAMI MURATA, TAKASHI KAWASHIMA, KIYOSHI ASAHINA, KENJI OKUTSU Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Editorial: New waves and purpose of comparative cognition study1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
(Source: Japanese Psychological Research)
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - August 31, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: SHIGERU WATANABE, YUMIKO YAMAZAKI Tags: Editorial Source Type: journals

Culture and visual perception: Does perceptual inference depend on culture?1,2Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: Some perceptual cues carry information about the overall pattern of an object (holistic cues), whereas others carry information about the distinct parts of an object (part cues). Drawing on recent work on culture and cognition, the authors predicted that people with European-American cultural backgrounds would be more capable of using part cues in perceptual inference than those with Asian backgrounds. No such cross-cultural difference was expected for the ability to use holistic cues. In two studies, participants were presented with either one of the two types of cues and asked to infer the identity of the origi...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - May 6, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: KEIKO ISHII, TAKAFUMI TSUKASAKI, SHINOBU KITAYAMA Tags: Short Report Source Type: journals

How strong is the comparison-to-the-strongest heuristic?: An empirical test of the comparison- to-the-strongest heuristic in probability judgment1,2Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This article tested whether only the strongest alternative outcome would affect probability judgment, using a variable selection method in a multiple regression analysis. Study 1 reanalyzed the results of Windschitl and Young (2001) and showed that only the strongest alternative outcome affects probability judgment. In Study 2, a new experiment was conducted to modify the methodological problems in Study 1. The results of Study 2 were identical to those of Study 1. All these results consistently supported the comparison hypothesis. (Source: Japanese Psychological Research)
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - May 6, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: KUNINORI NAKAMURA, KIMIHIKO YAMAGISHI Tags: Short Report Source Type: journals

Do local properties function as cues for musical key perception?1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: A global property (i.e., pitch set) of a melody appears to serve as a primary cue for key identification. Previous studies have proposed specific local properties in a melody (e.g., the augmented fourth, the perfect fifth, etc.) that may function as further cues. However, the role of the latter in key identification is controversial. The present study was designed to investigate what kinds of local properties, if any, function as reliable cues for key identification. Listeners were asked to identify keys for 450 melodies that consisted of the same pitch set, but which differed in sequential constraints. Using mul...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - May 6, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: RIE MATSUNAGA, JUN-ICHI ABE Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Does medial prefrontal cortex activity during self-knowledge reference reflect the uniqueness of self-knowledge?1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: For this study, functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to examine whether medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) activity during self-knowledge reference reflects the uniqueness of self-knowledge. Experiment 1 investigated neural activity during self-knowledge reference ("Does the word describe you?") and self-monitoring ("Does the word make you feel pleasant?"). The results showed that self-knowledge reference and self-monitoring activate common neural substrates within the MPFC. Experiment 2 compared neural activity produced by self-knowledge reference, other-knowledge (acquaintance-knowledge) reference ("Does...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - May 6, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: TAKASHI NAKAO, MAKOTO MIYATANI, MIZUKI NAKAO, TOMOHIRO TAKEZAWA, MASAHARU MARUISHI, HIROYUKI MURANAKA, HIROFUMI DOJO Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Effects of feature types on proportion discriminationEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: We investigated the effects of feature types on statistical description of relative frequency by testing the accuracy and precision in a proportion discrimination task. We used search symmetry pairs and search asymmetry pairs as the elements for comparison. In Experiment 1, we used sets of red and green dots and sets of parallel lines and converging lines as search symmetry pairs, and we used sets of circles and circles with lines as a search asymmetry pair. The results demonstrated that the proportion of pop-out elements in the asymmetry pair was overestimated and that precision of proportion discrimination diff...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - May 1, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: MIDORI TOKITA, AKIRA ISHIGUCHI Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Errata/ErratumEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
(Source: Japanese Psychological Research)
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - March 15, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Tags: Errata/Erratum Source Type: journals

Flow experiences in everyday activities of Japanese college students: Autotelic people and time management1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study examines the characteristics of flow activities, executive skills of time management and goal directedness related to autotelic personality styles. Japanese college students (155 men and 168 women) completed the Flow Experience Checklist, Evaluation after Everyday Life Activities Scale, Time Management Skill Scale, Experiential Time Perspective Scale, and Multiple Mood Scale with reference to five everyday activities. The results suggest that flow activities are related to the process of personal growth and self-advancement, and also provide pleasure and motivation for subsequent activity. Autotelic people repor...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - March 15, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: IKUO ISHIMURA, MASAHIRO KODAMA Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Effect of spatial inhibition on saccade trajectory depends on location-based mechanismsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: Saccade trajectory often curves away from a previously attended, inhibited location. A recent study of curved saccades showed that an inhibitory effect prevents ineffective reexamination during serial visual search. The time course of this effect differs from that of a similar inhibitory effect, known as inhibition of return (IOR). In the present study, we examined whether this saccade-related inhibitory effect can operate in an object-based manner (similar to IOR). Using a spatial cueing paradigm, we demonstrated that if a cue is presented on a placeholder that is then shifted from its original location, the sac...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - March 15, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: HIROYUKI SOGO, YUJI TAKEDA Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Expectation of empowerment as a determinant of citizen participation in waste management planning1,2Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: The study investigated the determinants of citizen participation in the development of a waste management plan. It was hypothesized that people would decide whether or not to participate in the planning based on the expectation of empowerment to be gained by their participation, not on the general evaluation of citizen participation. Four hundred and twenty-four volunteers responded to a self-report mailed survey conducted in August 2001 in Nisshin City. Nisshin City was selected as a city where the municipal government was starting to develop a basic plan for waste reduction and recycling. Major findings from th...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - March 15, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: HIROE MAEDA, YUKIO HIROSE Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Effect of negative emotion on visual attention: Automatic capture by fear-related stimuli1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In this study, we examined the effect of threatening pictures (e.g., snakes and spiders) on control of spatial attention using a probe detection task. In addition to attentional capture by the threatening stimuli (Unpredictable task), the effects of affective valence of the pictures on the voluntary control of attention were explored (Predictable task). Results showed that reaction time (RT) was facilitated to the probe that appeared at the location of threatening stimuli when it occurred in the right visual field (but not in the left visual field), indicating that attention was captured automatically, at least in this vis...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - March 15, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: SHIHO MIYAZAWA, SYOICHI IWASAKI Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Item difficulty parameter estimation using the idea of the graded response model and computerized adaptive testingEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: In test operations using IRT (item response theory), items are included in a test before being used to rate subjects and the response data is used to estimate their item parameters. However, this method of test operation may lead to item content leakage and an adequate test operation can become difficult. To address this problem, Ozaki and Toyoda (2005, 2006) developed item difficulty parameter estimation methods that use paired comparison data from the perspective of the difficulty of items as judged by raters familiar with the field. In the present paper, an improved method of item difficulty parameter estimati...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - March 1, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: KOKEN OZAKI, HIDEKI TOYODA Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Japanese Psychological ResearchEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
(Source: Japanese Psychological Research)
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - November 25, 2008 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Tags: Volume Contents Source Type: journals

Direction of perceptual displacement of a moving target's starting and vanishing points: The key role of velocityEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: Individuals make localization errors when asked to localize the perceived onset (starting point; SP) and offset (vanishing point; VP) of a moving target. For VP, a position shifted forward is usually indicated, whereas for SP two conflicting spatial mislocations are reported (i.e., one in the direction of motion and the other in the direction opposite to motion). Three experiments are presented, aimed at testing the influence on SP and VP errors of the modulation of target's velocity in the first, central, and last part of a horizontal or vertical motion path. A forward VP displacement was obtained, whereas for S...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - November 25, 2008 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: ROSSANA ACTIS-GROSSO, ALESSIA BASTIANELLI, NATALE STUCCHI Tags: Special issue: Fechner day 2007: The very first Asian Fechner day Source Type: journals

Visual search of trained and untrained drivers in a driving simulator1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: To investigate the effects of driving experience on visual search during driving, we measured eye movements during driving tasks using a driving simulator. We evaluated trained and untrained drivers for selected driving road section types (for example, intersections and straight roads). Participants in the trained group had received driving training by the simulator before the experiment, while the others had no driving training by it. In the experiment, the participants were instructed to drive safely in the simulator. The results of scan paths showed that eye positions were less variable in the trained group th...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - November 25, 2008 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: YASUHIRO SEYA, HIDETOSHI NAKAYASU, PATRICK PATTERSON Tags: Special issue: Fechner day 2007: The very first Asian Fechner day Source Type: journals

Functional approach to the integration of kinematic and dynamic variables in causal perception: Is there a link between phenomenology and behavioral responses?1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: The study of perceptual causality has seen a resurgence of interest ever since continuous behavioral measures, and not just perceptual reports, were proposed. As one such measure, representational momentum (RM) was recently applied by Hubbard (Hubbard, Blessum, & Ruppel, 2001; Hubbard & Ruppel, 2002) to Michotte's launching paradigm (Michotte, 1954). Among the several open issues regarding this use of RM stand the following three: (a) how the joint actions of dynamic and kinematic variables are integrated in RM; (b) the effect of specific response modalities; and (c) how RM relates to causal phenomenology. In the...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - November 25, 2008 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: NUNO ALEXANDRE DE SÁ TEIXEIRA, ARMANDO MÓNICA DE OLIVEIRA, RICARDO VIEGAS Tags: Special issue: Fechner day 2007: The very first Asian Fechner day Source Type: journals

Auditory sensitivity to temporal deviations from perceptual isochrony: Comparison of the starting point and ending point of acoustic change1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study was designed to investigate which acoustical feature functions as an effective cue to "mark" the occurrence of a new event. When two steady sounds are connected by a short frequency glide, at which point do we perceive the occurrence of the second sound: the starting point of the frequency glide or its ending point? To answer this question, experimental stimuli were designed to establish an isochronous structure that was conveyed exclusively by the starting or by the ending point of the glide. The frequency glide was made by modulating the carrier frequency of a sinusoid or the resonant frequency of a complex to...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - November 25, 2008 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: SATOMI TANAKA, MINORU TSUZAKI, ERIKO AIBA, HIROAKI KATO Tags: Special issue: Fechner day 2007: The very first Asian Fechner day Source Type: journals

Low-level audiovisual synchrony: Experiments and modelEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: We have carried out experiments to explore the effect of prior knowledge and expectation on the detection of audiovisual synchrony. By expanding on earlier methodologies, we have shown that the perception of synchrony is not affected by prior knowledge of lag type (i.e., visual signal precedes audio signal or vice versa). This result suggests that higher-level cognitive processes like expectation do not play a significant role in synchrony perception. We also introduce here a systems-level model based on cross-correlation that is compatible with both the observations of our experiments and with the observations o...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - November 25, 2008 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: SHEENA LUU, WILLY WONG, HAFIZ NOORDIN Tags: Special issue: Fechner day 2007: The very first Asian Fechner day Source Type: journals

Judgment of perceptual synchrony between two pulses and verification of its relation to cochlear delay by an auditory model1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study investigates whether the delay caused in the course of wave propagation along the basilar membrane (BM) of the cochlea (i.e., the cochlear delay) affects the perceptual judgment of the synchronization of two sounds. An experiment was conducted to examine the detection of asynchrony using two types of chirps (compensatory and enhanced chirps) and a pulse. A compensatory delay chirp was designed to align the peaks of the BM velocity. An enhanced delay chirp had a delay pattern that "enhances" the assumed cochlear delay. The pulse had a cosine phase relation and, as a result, an intrinsic cochlear delay at the audi...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - November 25, 2008 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: ERIKO AIBA, MINORU TSUZAKI, SATOMI TANAKA, MASASHI UNOKI Tags: Special issue: Fechner day 2007: The very first Asian Fechner day Source Type: journals

Goodness is central: Task invariance of perceptual organization in a dual-task setting1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: We adopted the psychological refractoriness paradigm to study whether visual pattern goodness affects central processing load in a same-different task. In a dual-task experiment, a two-alternative forced choice auditory classification was followed by a same-different task in which Garner's classical five-dot patterns were presented. Goodness of these patterns and stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) between the first and second task were varied between trials. Participants used a physical sameness criterion; only patterns of the same shape and orientation were responded to as same. Strong effects of pattern goodness a...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - November 25, 2008 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: THOMAS LACHMANN, CEES VAN LEEUWEN Tags: Special issue: Fechner day 2007: The very first Asian Fechner day Source Type: journals

Development of psychophysics in Japan1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: In Japan, psychophysics began as early as 1888 with the first lecture on it given by Yujiro Motora at the Imperial University (the University of Tokyo), following the completion of his PhD, at the laboratory of G. S. Hall. In 1910, A Photographic Album of Experimental Psychology was published, which included many photographs of psychophysical experiments. In 1933, Sadaji Takagi conducted the first experiment on animal psychophysics to investigate shape constancy in small birds. In 1949, the first experiment on infant psychophysics was conducted by Jyuji Misumi to study the early development of size constancy. And...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - November 25, 2008 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: TADASU OYAMA Tags: Special issue: Fechner day 2007: The very first Asian Fechner day Source Type: journals

Two-dimensional psychophysics in chickens and humans: Comparative aspects of perceptual relativityEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: Whereas the contextual basis of psychophysical responding is well founded, the compound influence of sensory and perceptual frames of reference constitutes a challenging issue in comparative one- and multidimensional psychophysics (e.g., Sarris, 2004, 2006). We refer to previous investigations, which tested the assumption that the chicken's relational choice in the one-dimensional case is systematically altered by context conditions similar to the findings stemming from human participants. In this paper mainly the context-dependent stimulus coding was investigated for the important, but largely neglected, two-dim...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - November 25, 2008 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: PETRA HAUF, VIKTOR SARRIS Tags: Special issue: Fechner day 2007: The very first Asian Fechner day Source Type: journals

Loudness of non-steady-state soundsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: Basic research in psychoacoustics and its applications are discussed. Psychophysical laws should be robust in order to be used for practical purposes. The importance of the development and use of appropriate psychophysical methods in relation to the present study is introduced. When laboratory findings are applied to real-life situations, there are various problems that have to be considered. It is necessary to control for complicated variables, to cover a wide area of stimuli, from static stimuli to dynamic stimuli, and to take into consideration the effects of cognitive factors and ecological validity. Using th...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - November 25, 2008 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: SEIICHIRO NAMBA, SONOKO KUWANO, HUGO FASTL Tags: Special issue: Fechner day 2007: The very first Asian Fechner day Source Type: journals

Editorial: Fechner day 2007: The very first Asian Fechner dayEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
(Source: Japanese Psychological Research)
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - November 1, 2008 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: SHUJI MORI Tags: Special issue: Fechner day 2007: The very first Asian Fechner day Source Type: journals

Role of endpoints and closures in feature search1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: The present study intended to examine the role of endpoints and of closures, the two most frequently referred to features, in a feature-search paradigm. Two experiments were conducted with a rigorous stimulus control using random lined figures of different levels of complexity. The experiments gave almost identical results: there was no search asymmetry between the two features, smaller latencies were obtained in the presence of a feature as a target rather than in its absence, and the latencies were smaller for the displays having a background consisting of closures rather than for those having a background of e...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - September 25, 2008 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: FUMIO KANBE Tags: Short Reports Source Type: journals

Effect of goal difficulty and feedback seeking on goal attainment and learning1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: This field study investigated the effect of goal difficulty and feedback seeking on goal attainment and learning in Management by Objectives (MBO) programs. Participants (n = 105) described the degree of their goal difficulty. After 6 months, they answered a questionnaire that inquired about the frequency of the feedback-seeking and the degree of learning during the 6-month period. Data about the extent of goal attainment were obtained from the participants' immediate supervisors. The results indicated that goal difficulty and the frequency of feedback seeking were positively related to the degree of goal attainm...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - September 25, 2008 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: SAORI YANAGIZAWA Tags: Short Reports Source Type: journals

Asymmetry in the detection of shapes from shading in infants1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: We investigated 3- and 4-month-old infants' sensitivity to differences defined by shading using a paired-comparison familiarity/novelty preference procedure. Infants were familiarized with a pair of displays consisting of homogeneous shaded disks, and then were tested with two displays: the familiar display and a novel one containing shaded disks with reversed polarity (defined as the target). Experiment 1 examined two assumptions on discerning shapes from shading in infants by manipulating the orientations in the shading gradient of stimuli. When the orientation of the shading gradient was vertical, 4-month-old ...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - September 25, 2008 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: TOMOKO IMURA, MASAKI TOMONAGA, MASAMI K. YAMAGUCHI, AKIHIRO YAGI Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Magnification rate of objects in a perspective image to fit to our perceptionEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: A landscape photograph may give a different impression from that formed at the real scene, with respect to the size and distance of objects. Researchers have reported that the perceived sizes and distances of objects in a photograph are not identical to those in a real space. In order to develop a method to create a graphic image that is close to our visual impression as seen in the real space, two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, we examined how the magnification rate of the perceived size to the object size on the retina varied with the viewing distance (range was from 1 m to 10 m). In Experiment 2,...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - September 25, 2008 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: KAZUMI NAGATA, ATSUSHI OSA, MAKOTO ICHIKAWA, TAKESHI KINOSHITA, HIDETOSHI MIIKE Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Interhemispheric interaction in word- and color-matching of Kanji color words1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: The aim of the present study was to investigate the possibility that a shift toward a within-hemisphere advantage would emerge when two stimulus items receive, respectively, different processing (vs. when they receive similar processing). Using right-handed participants, we briefly presented two Kanji color-word items as either within-field or across-fields. Viewers had to match the two items in terms of ink color (a color-matching task) or word meaning (a name-matching task). Each Kanji color word was presented with the same (congruent) or different (incongruent) ink color relative to the word meaning. Our resul...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - September 1, 2008 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: KAZUHITO YOSHIZAKI, HIROSHI SASAKI, KIMIKO KATO Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Japanese parents' estimates of their own and their children's multiple intelligences: Cultural modesty and moderate differentiationEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: A total of 198 Japanese parents completed a questionnaire concerning their own and their children's estimated overall general (g), and multiple intelligences. Japanese parents' self-estimates were somewhat lower than those found in the Western populations but males (fathers) rated their own overall "g" score and seven Gardner multiple intelligences, significantly higher than did females (mothers). There were few sex differences, however, when parents rated sons or daughters. Parents' own IQ estimate was the best predictor of the first (eldest) child's estimated IQ. A regression analysis indicated that the best pr...
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - May 1, 2008 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: ADRIAN FURNHAM, SARA FUKUMOTO Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Japanese parents’ estimates of their own and their children's multiple intelligences: Cultural modesty and moderate differentiationEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Japanese Psychological Research, Volume 50, Issue 2, Page 63-76, May 2008. Abstract: A total of 198 Japanese parents completed a questionnaire concerning their own and their children's estimated overall general (g), and multiple intelligences. Japanese parents’ self-estimates were somewhat lower than those found in the Western ... (Source: Japanese Psychological Research)
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - April 16, 2008 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Tags: article Source Type: journals

Young children's difficulty with inhibitory control in a social context 1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Japanese Psychological Research, Volume 50, Issue 2, Page 87-92, May 2008. Abstract: The authors’ prior research has documented that young children's behaviors in the Dimensional Change Card Sorting (DCCS) task can be influenced by their observation of another person performing the task and has suggested that young children ... (Source: Japanese Psychological Research)
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - April 16, 2008 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Tags: article Source Type: journals

New equally readable charts based on anisotropy of peripheral visual acuity 1Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Japanese Psychological Research, Volume 50, Issue 2, Page 93-99, May 2008. Abstract: Anstis’ equally readable chart for visual acuity has been widely quoted in textbooks on visual perception. However, this chart does not reflect the anisotropy of peripheral visual acuity that has been reported by previous studies. Here, the ... (Source: Japanese Psychological Research)
Source: Japanese Psychological Research - April 16, 2008 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Tags: article Source Type: journals