Most recent papers:

• Are We In or Are We Out? Ingroup Prototypicality Effects in Implicit Ethnic‐American Associations.
  Thierry Devos, Kristin J. Anderson.
  Japanese Psychological Research. October 25, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract The goal of the present research was to document ingroup prototypicality effects in implicit associations between ethnic groups and the American identity. Across four studies, we compared implicit associations displayed by perceivers who either belonged to or did not belong to the target ethnic groups. In Studies 1 and 2, African, Asian, Latino, and European American participants were randomly assigned to complete an Implicit Association Test contrasting either their ingroup and an outgroup or two outgroups (third‐party perspective). Data yielded evidence for ingroup prototypicality effects in all interethnic comparisons. Studies 3 and 4 used large datasets available through Project Implicit. We examined whether ingroup prototypicality effects were restricted to U.S. residents or generalized to participants living in other regions of the world. Results showed that ingroup prototypicality effects did not presuppose immersion in the U.S. context, but at the same time patterns of implicit associations varied according to region of residence. Implicit ethnic‐American associations are at least partially the reflection of the perceivers’ positioning in interethnic comparisons. - Japanese Psychological Research, EarlyView.
  

  October 25, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12232   open full text
• The Role of the Quality of College‐Based Relationship on Social Media in College‐to‐Work Transition of Korean College Students: The Longitudinal Examination of Intimacy on Social Media, Social Capital, and Loneliness.
  Youngmi Sohn, Sungbum Woo, Duckhyun Jo, Eunjoo Yang.
  Japanese Psychological Research. October 25, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract This study investigated the mediation effects of social capital on the associations between the quality of relationship, intimacy in particular, with college friends on social media and loneliness during college‐to‐work transition of Korean college students. Longitudinal data were collected from three surveys with a 6‐month interval. The first wave of the survey was completed by 521 participants; 110 graduates participated in the second wave, and 175 in the third wave. Latent growth modeling analysis revealed that the linear growth function produced a better fit than the no‐growth models for intimacy on social media, social capital, and loneliness. While intimacy on social media and bonding capital increased during the three‐time interval, bridging capital and loneliness decreased. In addition, the slope of intimacy on social media was positively related to the slopes of bridging and bonding capital, both of which, in turn, had a negative association with the slope of loneliness. These findings indicate the beneficial role of the quality of relationship on social media in college‐to‐work transition. - Japanese Psychological Research, EarlyView.
  

  October 25, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12234   open full text
• Differential Effect of Two Mental Stress Tasks on Arterial Stiffness.
  Kenta Matsumura, Hiroko Noguchi, Peter Rolfe, Takehiro Yamakoshi, Yutaka Matsuoka.
  Japanese Psychological Research. October 23, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Acute mental stress is believed to induce transient arterial dysfunction, but relatively few data are available. We therefore examined the effect of mental stress tasks that could induce differential hemodynamic responses on arterial dysfunction. Forty‐eight participants conducted either a mental arithmetic (MA) task or a mirror‐tracing (MT) task. Cardiovascular indices and arterial stiffness were measured before, during, and after these tasks. Analysis revealed that increases in arterial stiffness during the task and during recovery were more pronounced for the MA than for the MT, and that evoked hemodynamic response was more myocardial for MA than for MT. These results clearly show that MA and MT tasks that induce differential hemodynamic responses have a differential effect on arterial stiffness. This finding sheds light on the underlying mechanism that may account for the relationship between cardiovascular reactivity and cardiovascular disease. - Japanese Psychological Research, EarlyView.
  

  October 23, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12235   open full text
• Expertise in the Game of Go and Levels of Visuospatial and Pattern Recognition Abilities.
  Marcin Wojtasinski, Piotr Francuz.
  Japanese Psychological Research. October 19, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract The results of existing research indicate higher levels of visuospatial and pattern recognition abilities in experts in the game of Go compared to novices. However, the tasks included in the research have been focused only on Go‐game situations. This study aimed to verify the hypothesis that experts in the game of Go would achieve higher scores, compared to novices, on behavioral tests measuring visuospatial abilities and that pattern recognition tests would be a predictor of group membership (experts, low‐skill players, novices). We consider that the game of Go can be treated as a special case of tasks related to visuospatial abilities and pattern recognition. Sixty men participated in the study, including 17 experts in the game of Go, 13 low‐skill players, and 30 novices. The results of behavioral tests—the advanced version of Raven's Progressive Matrices and the APIS‐Z Test's Visuospatial Abilities subscale, which measure pattern recognition and visuospatial abilities, respectively—confirmed the hypotheses. - Japanese Psychological Research, EarlyView.
  

  October 19, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12236   open full text
• Effects of Mentally Subtracting Positive Events on Affective Status in Japanese College Students.
  Kenji Hatori, Ikuo Ishimura, Masahiro Kodama.
  Japanese Psychological Research. October 19, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract This study examined the effect on positive and negative emotions in Japanese college students of mentally subtracting grateful events. Participants (N = 62) were randomly assigned to one of the following three conditions: (a) writing with surprise the ways that a positive thing or event might never have happened or might never have been part of life (the mentally subtracting a present good [MS] group), (b) writing without surprise the ways in which a positive thing or event happened easily or was certain to become a part of life (the counting gratitude group), and (c) no writing control. The results of analysis of variance showed that the MS group experienced significantly increased positive emotion and decreased negative emotion between pre‐test and post‐test. Furthermore, the MS group showed significantly greater positive emotion than the control group at post‐test. Surprise mediated the effects of the MS group intervention on positive emotion but not on negative emotion. Issues related to gratitude induction and mediation of surprise are discussed. - Japanese Psychological Research, EarlyView.
  

  October 19, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12233   open full text
• Issue Information ‐ PI.
  
  Japanese Psychological Research. October 01, 2018
  --- - - Japanese Psychological Research, Volume 60, Issue 4, Page 391-391, October 2018.
  

  October 01, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12178   open full text
• Issue Information.
  
  Japanese Psychological Research. October 01, 2018
  --- - - Japanese Psychological Research, Volume 60, Issue 4, Page 189-189, October 2018.
  

  October 01, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12177   open full text
• Japanese Psychological Research.
  
  Japanese Psychological Research. October 01, 2018
  --- - - Japanese Psychological Research, Volume 60, Issue 4, Page 387-388, October 2018.
  

  October 01, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12231   open full text
• Editorial: fNIRS in Psychological Research: Functional Neuroimaging Beyond Conventional Fields.
  So Kanazawa, Ippeita Dan.
  Japanese Psychological Research. October 01, 2018
  --- - - Japanese Psychological Research, Volume 60, Issue 4, Page 191-195, October 2018.
  

  October 01, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12230   open full text
• Announcement.
  
  Japanese Psychological Research. October 01, 2018
  --- - - Japanese Psychological Research, Volume 60, Issue 4, Page 389-390, October 2018.
  

  October 01, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12226   open full text
• Validation of a Japanese Version of the Work Engagement Scale for Students.
  Jun Tayama, Wilmar Schaufeli, Akihito Shimazu, Masanori Tanaka, Akari Takahama.
  Japanese Psychological Research. September 05, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract We sought to verify the reliability and validity of the Japanese version of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale for Students (UWES‐S‐J). We examined 824 university students. We calculated the goodness of fit for a single‐factor model and the three‐factor model. The fit to the data was better for the three‐factor than for the single‐factor model, but all factors were highly positively correlated. Additionally, the UWES‐S‐J had good internal consistency and test–retest reliability. For the content validity, there were significant positive correlations between the UWES‐S‐J score and social support, a resilience scale, and subjective happiness. The UWES‐S‐J has good reliability and validity and may therefore be used to assess study engagement among Japanese students. - Japanese Psychological Research, EarlyView.
  

  September 05, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12229   open full text
• Parent and Staff Uncertainties Regarding the Philosophy of Early Intervention in a Preschool Autism Program.
  Shahar Gindi.
  Japanese Psychological Research. August 31, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract This study investigated the influences of dominant paradigms in the field of autism on the attitudes and beliefs of stakeholders in an early intervention (EI) program for children with autism. This EI program is based on a developmental approach with the premise that intensive intervention in young children (ages 2–6 years) can change their developmental trajectory given the brain's plasticity. This study was based on 48 interviews with parents and staff, as well as three focus groups with stakeholders at a program serving young children with autism. Qualitative data analysis revealed that parents and staff were most influenced by the curative aspect of the medical model while they did not commonly demonstrate adherence to the principles of EI. Parents also revealed conflicting attitudes simultaneously, as many of them expressed wishes for their children to be cured of autism while at the same time wanting that interventions would continue indefinitely. - Japanese Psychological Research, EarlyView.
  

  August 31, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12228   open full text
• Analysis of Emotions and Dysfunctional Attitudes in Depression.
  Ata Tehranchi, Hamid Taher Neshatdoost, Shole Amiri, Mick Power.
  Japanese Psychological Research. August 31, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract The current study was designed to examine the role of basic emotions and dysfunctional attitudes in depression. Moreover, six models related to the organization of emotions were examined through confirmatory factor analysis. Two hundred individuals with major depressive disorder were recruited from three clinical psychology centers. Participants completed a battery of questionnaires measuring basic emotions, dysfunctional attitudes, and depressive. Results demonstrated that the dysfunctional attitude of “need for approval” and the basic emotions of disgust and sadness could predict depressive scores positively and significantly. It was also shown that the dysfunctional attitudes could positively and significantly predict the two negative emotions of disgust and sadness. Thus, the findings supported an analysis in which the two basic emotions of sadness and disgust were elevated in individuals with depressive disorders. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the proposed basic emotions model and did not support alternative models, such as the positive affect and negative affect model. - Japanese Psychological Research, EarlyView.
  

  August 31, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12220   open full text
• The Age of Neuroergonomics: Towards Ubiquitous and Continuous Measurement of Brain Function with fNIRS.
  Adrian Curtin, Hasan Ayaz.
  Japanese Psychological Research. August 29, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Neuroergonomics is an emerging field that investigates the human brain in relation to behavioral performance in natural environments and everyday settings. Functional near‐infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), a noninvasive brain‐monitoring technology that relies on optical techniques to detect changes of cortical hemodynamic responses to human perceptual, cognitive, and motor functioning, is an ideal candidate tool. Ultraportable wearable and wireless fNIRS sensors are already breaking the limitations of traditional neuroimaging approaches that have imposed limitations on experimental protocols, data‐collection settings, and task conditions at the expense of ecological validity. This review summarizes emerging trends for fNIRS applications, from aerospace to medicine, with diverse populations and towards clinical solutions. We will review recent studies, such as mental workload assessment of specialized operators performing standardized and complex cognitive tasks and development of expertise during practice of complex cognitive and visuomotor tasks (ranging from aircraft piloting and robot control). Various recent synergistic fNIRS applications for human–human and human–machine interaction, including synthetic speech perception, interpersonal neural synchronization, and brain computer interfaces, highlight the potential use and are ushering the dawn of a new age in applied neuroscience and neuroengineering. - Japanese Psychological Research, Volume 60, Issue 4, Page 374-386, October 2018.
  

  August 29, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12227   open full text
• Near‐Infrared Spectroscopy as a New Tool for Neurofeedback Training: Applications in Psychiatry and Methodological Considerations.
  Ann‐Christine Ehlis, Beatrix Barth, Justin Hudak, Helena Storchak, Lydia Weber, Ann‐Christin S. Kimmig, Benjamin Kreifelts, Thomas Dresler, Andreas J. Fallgatter.
  Japanese Psychological Research. August 28, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Over the past decades, functional near‐infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has become a valuable tool in the online assessment of brain function in psychological and neuropsychiatric research. Recently, fNIRS has also been employed in the context of neurofeedback (NF), with pilot studies indicating that hemodynamic responses can be deliberately regulated and that neuroplastic changes occur over the course of several training sessions. This review article provides a comprehensive overview of the recent implementation and development of fNIRS as an NF tool; specifically, we will outline initial studies in healthy participants as well as children and adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and describe new protocols aimed at reducing auditory verbal hallucinations (schizophrenic patients) and anxiety symptoms (patients with social anxiety disorder), respectively. Finally, we will discuss recent methodological developments and concerns as well as potential future perspectives. We conclude that fNIRS is a useful tool for conducting NF, especially in terms of multi‐session training. However, methodological details need to be considered when designing fNIRS‐based NF studies, and future protocols should aim at training broader network structures and implementing implicit training protocols. Finally, future studies should focus not only on (clinical) effects of fNIRS‐based NF, but also on the underlying mechanisms and activity changes in extended brain networks. - Japanese Psychological Research, Volume 60, Issue 4, Page 225-241, October 2018.
  

  August 28, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12225   open full text
• Survey Satisficing Biases the Estimation of Moderation Effects.
  Asako Miura, Tetsuro Kobayashi.
  Japanese Psychological Research. August 20, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Survey satisficing in online data collection biases the estimation of treatment effects in many ways. Extending the findings of a previous study, which demonstrated that satisficing biased the estimation of main treatment effects, this study also shows that satisficing distorts the estimation of moderation effects. Targeting Japanese adults’ attitudes toward food, this study tests how the effect of country of production (Japan vs. China) is moderated by preexisting ethnocentric attitudes. The results show that while nonsatisficers predictably adjust their attitude toward food based on their preexisting ethnocentric attitude, satisficers stick to their initial stereotypical response. That is, the theoretically predicted moderation effect was observed among nonsatisficers, but not among satisficers, which indicates that satisficing biases not only the estimation of a treatment effect but also that of a moderation effect. - Japanese Psychological Research, EarlyView.
  

  August 20, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12223   open full text
• Characteristics of Family Interaction of Individuals with Hikikomori (Prolonged Social Withdrawal) From the Viewpoint of Behavior Theory.
  Shunsuke Nonaka, Hironori Shimada, Motohiro Sakai.
  Japanese Psychological Research. August 20, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract The cognitive behavioral approach for families of individuals with hikikomori (IWH) places importance on assessing family interaction from a behavior theory. However, there is no gold standard method for the assessment of family interaction of IWH. Additionally, the characteristics of the family interactions of IWH have not been clarified. This study aims to (a) develop the Family Interaction Scale for Hikikomori (FIS‐H) using parent‐reported data, and (b) clarify the characteristics of hikikomori cases. First, the FIS‐H factor structure was examined. Second, to examine the reliability and validity of the FIS‐H and the characteristics of hikikomori cases, parents of IWH (hikikomori‐group) and unaffected parents (without‐group) completed the FIS‐H and the Relationship Happiness Scale. Based on data from 146 parents, the FIS‐H preliminary version consisted of four factors with a total of 12 items (Study 1). The reliability and validity of the FIS‐H were also confirmed to be acceptable using data from 246 hikikomori‐group participants. The hikikomori‐group had higher FIS‐H scores than did the without‐group (Study 2). These results show that it is important to appropriately assess family interactions. - Japanese Psychological Research, EarlyView.
  

  August 20, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12219   open full text
• Role of the Right Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex in the Cognitive Process of Matching Between Action and Visual Feedback.
  Hiroshi Shibata, Takuya Onuma, Yasuhiro Takeshima, Yuwadee Penwannakul, Nobuyuki Sakai.
  Japanese Psychological Research. August 17, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract In this functional near‐infrared spectroscopy study, we measured brain activity during the recognition of congruence between one's action and its visual feedback (vFB) in an experimental environment with few spatial limitations. We manipulated (a) action–category congruence, during which participants performed either a precision grip or a full grip on an object and observed the picture of either a precision grip or a full grip as vFB; and (b) spatial–position congruence, during which participants’ actions were performed either on an object located in the front (i.e., a vFB presented on a monitor spatially overlapping the participant's hand) or to the right (spatially non‐overlapped). There was a significant increase in oxy‐hemoglobin concentration in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in the category‐match condition compared with the category‐mismatch condition. However, no significant effect related to the spatial position was found. The results suggest that right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activity is modulated by cognitive processes associated with the matching of the action category between one's action and its vFB in natural environments with few spatial limitations. - Japanese Psychological Research, Volume 60, Issue 4, Page 288-299, October 2018.
  

  August 17, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12217   open full text
• Learning by Preparing‐to‐Teach and Teaching: A Meta‐Analysis.
  Keiichi Kobayashi.
  Japanese Psychological Research. August 16, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract The present research meta‐analytically examined the effects of preparing‐to‐teach and subsequent teaching (relative to mere studying without teaching expectancy) on the acquisition of domain knowledge. The synthesis of 28 studies indicated that the estimated effect sizes (Hedges' gs) were 0.35 for preparing‐to‐teach and 0.56 for teaching with preparing‐to‐teach. Both preparing‐to‐teach and teaching with preparing‐to‐teach were effective in promoting deep learning (as well as surface learning) and even after a delay. The learning benefits of teaching with preparing‐to‐teach were larger when students expected and engaged in an interactive teaching activity than when they expected and engaged in a non‐interactive teaching activity. The mere expectation of interactive teaching also produced larger learning effects than the expectation of non‐interactive teaching. These results suggest that preparing‐to‐teach and teaching, interactive teaching after preparing to do so in particular, are useful for enhancing learning. - Japanese Psychological Research, EarlyView.
  

  August 16, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12221   open full text
• Comprehension‐Dependent Cortical Activation During Speech Comprehension Tasks with Multiple Languages: Functional Near‐Infrared Spectroscopy Study.
  Miaomei Lei, Toshinori Miyoshi, Yoshiki Niwa, Ippeita Dan, Hiroki Sato.
  Japanese Psychological Research. August 16, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract In this era of globalization, a second language (which is often English in Japan) has become prevalent and important. To investigate whether cerebral hemodynamics could represent the speech comprehension level of a learned language, we measured the brain activation of 46 non‐fluent Japanese learners of English using functional near‐infrared spectroscopy while performing speech comprehension tasks. Tasks were given in three languages: English (second language), Japanese (native language), and Chinese (unknown language). Analyses of the hemodynamic responses showed that the activated areas for the English task were widely distributed in the bilateral frontal and temporal regions, and this was more evident than for the Japanese and Chinese tasks. This suggests that comprehension of a second language involves more cognitive and/or attentional load. Moreover, particularly in the English tasks, there were significant differences in activations between the cases when participants correctly answered questions and the cases when they did not. These results suggest that the hemodynamic response can provide the information needed to estimate the speech comprehension level of a learned language. - Japanese Psychological Research, Volume 60, Issue 4, Page 300-310, October 2018.
  

  August 16, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12218   open full text
• Toward Interactive Social Neuroscience: Neuroimaging Real‐World Interactions in Various Populations.
  Yasuyo Minagawa, Mingdi Xu, Satoshi Morimoto.
  Japanese Psychological Research. July 27, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Human social activity is a continuous dynamic behavior consisting of live social signal exchanges; thus, studying interactions among multiple humans is critical to understanding social cognition. Indeed, social neuroscience focusing on such aspects—interactive social neuroscience—is an emerging field of interest. Functional near‐infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has played a significant role in accelerating this field by enabling real‐world neuroimaging for various populations. The present paper will first review previous hyperscanning studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), magnetoencephalography (MEG), and electroencephalography (EEG). We will then summarize attempts and findings of fNIRS hyperscanning studies on social interaction in adult populations. Finally, we will review recent investigations of interactive social neuroscience in young populations and show preliminary results from a mother–infant hyperscanning study. These studies have predominantly revealed synchronized brain activities between humans and have identified conditions in which such inter‐personal connectivity was found to be increased. Furthermore, these studies suggest possible mechanisms of inter‐brain coupling: a process that recruits both mirror system and mentalization networks. Although fNIRS hyperscanning of infants remains limited, the reviewed literature demonstrates significant potential for fNIRS to disclose the interactive social brain and its development. - Japanese Psychological Research, Volume 60, Issue 4, Page 196-224, October 2018.
  

  July 27, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12207   open full text
• Hypoactivation of the Right Prefrontal Cortex Underlying Motor‐Related Inhibitory Deficits in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Functional Near‐Infrared Spectroscopy Study.
  Takahiro Ikeda, Tatsuya Tokuda, Yukifumi Monden, Masahiro Hirai, Sakae G. Mizushima, Masako Nagashima, Yasushi Kyutoku, Takamichi Taniguchi, Hideo Shimoizumi, Ippeita Dan, Takanori Yamagata.
  Japanese Psychological Research. July 24, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention‐deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are believed to share the symptom of neurocognitive dysfunction in executive functions. Regarding the components of executive functions, however, dysfunction of motor‐response inhibitory control in children with ASD remains unclear. Thus, using functional near‐infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), we investigated whether putative inhibitory brain dysfunctions are applicable to children with ASD by adopting a go/no‐go task, which has robustly evoked activation in typically developing (TD) children but not in ADHD children. Twenty‐four ASD and 24 TD children underwent a go/no‐go task, and their cortical hemodynamics were assessed using fNIRS. Relative to TD participants, ASD participants showed reduced activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus and middle frontal gyrus (IFG/MFG) during go/no‐go tasks. The current finding suggests that hypoactivation in the right IFG/MFG during a go/no‐go task would serve as a potential biomarker for identifying children with ASD. - Japanese Psychological Research, Volume 60, Issue 4, Page 251-264, October 2018.
  

  July 24, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12204   open full text
• A Review on the Use of Wearable Functional Near‐Infrared Spectroscopy in Naturalistic Environments.
  Paola Pinti, Clarisse Aichelburg, Sam Gilbert, Antonia Hamilton, Joy Hirsch, Paul Burgess, Ilias Tachtsidis.
  Japanese Psychological Research. July 19, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract The development of novel miniaturized wireless and wearable functional near‐infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) devices has paved the way for new functional brain imaging that could revolutionize the cognitive research fields. Over the past few decades, several studies have been conducted with conventional fNIRS systems that have demonstrated the suitability of this technology for a wide variety of populations and applications, to investigate both the healthy brain and the diseased brain. However, what makes wearable fNIRS even more appealing is its capability to allow measurements in everyday‐life scenarios that are not possible with other gold‐standard neuroimaging modalities, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging. This could have a huge impact on the way we explore the neural bases and mechanisms underpinning human brain functioning. The aim of this review is to provide an overview of studies conducted with wearable fNIRS in naturalistic settings in the field of cognitive neuroscience. In addition, we present the challenges associated with the use of wearable fNIRS in unrestrained contexts, discussing solutions that will allow accurate inference of functional brain activity. Finally, we provide an overview of the future perspectives in cognitive neuroscience that we believe would benefit the most from the study of wearable fNIRS devices. - Japanese Psychological Research, Volume 60, Issue 4, Page 347-373, October 2018.
  

  July 19, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12206   open full text
• Repeated Stops for a Red Light Induced a Left‐Superior Asymmetrical Brain Activity in the Near‐Infrared Spectroscopy Reflecting Approach Motivation of Anger in Elderly Adults but not in Younger Adults.
  Ryuzaburo Nakata, Namiko Kubo‐Kawai, Kazuo Okanoya, Nobuyuki Kawai.
  Japanese Psychological Research. July 09, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Previous electroencephalography studies on anger suggest that greater left than right frontal cortical activity is associated with approach motivation of anger. Our previous study showed that greater left‐superior frontal activation of electroencephalography was associated with subjective anger during a traffic jam simulation that forced participants to maintain a slower speed than expected in elderly adults, but not in young adults. We subsequently observed similar left‐superior frontal brain activity using near‐infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) in elderly adults in the same driving situation. Using NIRS, the present study demonstrated that the elderly, but not young adults, exhibited left‐superior brain activity in the front‐dorsolateral area when they were forced to stop four times at a red traffic light in a driving simulator. Driving through the same intersections with green lights did not elicit brain activation in either age group. After four red lights, but not after four green lights, a yellow light induced left‐superior brain activity in elderly adults. This asymmetric brain activity is associated with Trail Making Test score, which reflects executive functioning. These results are discussed with regard to the inhibitory potential of aged adults. - Japanese Psychological Research, Volume 60, Issue 4, Page 327-336, October 2018.
  

  July 09, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12205   open full text
• The Representation of Imagery of the City: The Impact of Studies and Imagery Ability.
  Alfredo Campos, Diego Campos‐Juanatey.
  Japanese Psychological Research. July 03, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract This study aimed to assess the impact of the type of undergraduate studies and the ability to form mental images on representations of city imagery. A total of 291 Architecture and Business Studies undergraduates participated in the study. Participants completed a 5‐min task of drawing their own mental map of a city. The number of point marks, line marks, and area marks drawn and the system of representation were assessed. Business Studies undergraduates represented more point marks using a point than Architecture undergraduates, whereas the latter drew more point marks in plan and in 3D than the former. The ability to form spatial images had no influence on the number of point, line, or area marks drawn. Significant differences between women and men were observed in the 3D representations, and in the configuration. - Japanese Psychological Research, EarlyView.
  

  July 03, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12208   open full text
• Cheering Enhances Inter‐Brain Synchronization Between Sensorimotor Areas of Player and Observer.
  Tadayoshi Koide, Sotaro Shimada.
  Japanese Psychological Research. July 03, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Cheering for another person is a common experience. Cheering may facilitate the cheerer's subjective unity with the cheered‐for person, potentially involving synchronized activity between the two individuals’ brains. In the current study, we measured the sensorimotor cortical activity of a player and an observer simultaneously during a competitive game, using functional near‐infrared spectroscopy. The player performed the rock‐paper‐scissors game against an experimenter while the observer either cheered for that player (cheering group) or judged whether the player cheated or not (control group). In the cheering group, observers reported a significantly stronger sense of unity with the player, and exhibited greater sensorimotor activation when observing the player win, compared with the control group. The functional connectivity between the sensorimotor areas of the player and observer was significantly greater in the cheering group, exhibiting a significant correlation with the subjective sense of unity between the player and observer. These results suggest that cheering enhances the synchronization of the player's and the observer's internal states, establishing a sense of unity. - Japanese Psychological Research, Volume 60, Issue 4, Page 265-275, October 2018.
  

  July 03, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12202   open full text
• Fabric Softener Fragrances Modulate the Impression Toward Female Faces and Frontal Brain Activity.
  Takuya Onuma, Nobuyuki Sakai.
  Japanese Psychological Research. June 29, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract This study aimed to investigate the modulatory effect of olfactory cues on impression toward faces. Twelve Japanese university students participated in the experiment. Before the participants had arrived, the experimental room had been filled with one of three fragrances of fabric softener as the ambient odor, or with no odor. All participants were exposed to each of the four odor conditions on separate days. In the experimental room, participants viewed 20 photographs of Japanese female faces and evaluated their impression toward the faces. The brain activity from the frontal brain region was recorded with functional near‐infrared spectroscopy. The fragrances enhanced an effeminate impression for the faces, but the effect was face‐dependent. A positive relationship between the impression change induced by the fragrances and the activity of the right frontal brain was observed. These findings indicated that olfactory cues modulate face perception in a manner that cannot be explained by a mood effect, and that the frontal brain region is involved in the reconstruction process of the integrated impression of face and olfactory cues. - Japanese Psychological Research, Volume 60, Issue 4, Page 276-287, October 2018.
  

  June 29, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12203   open full text
• The Role of Individual Factors in Friendship Formation: Considering Shyness, Self‐Esteem, Social Skills, and Defensive Pessimism.
  Haruka Shimizu, Ken'ichiro Nakashima, Yasuko Morinaga.
  Japanese Psychological Research. June 12, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of four individual factors (shyness, self‐esteem, social skills, and defensive pessimism) on the formation of friendships among undergraduate students. Freshmen (N = 93) completed a questionnaire assessing their shyness, self‐esteem, social skills, and level of defensive pessimism. Then, they answered questions about interpersonal indices (number of friends, satisfaction with friendships, their willingness to continue relationships, and their feelings of interpersonal friction). After 3 months, they completed a questionnaire about their anxiety state and behavior when talking with the people they had met since university admission. Moreover, they discussed the interpersonal indices they used in a pre‐questionnaire. Path analysis indicated that shyness directly leads to having fewer friends, whereas social skills lead to having more friends through extroversive behavior. Moreover, self‐esteem was positively related to an increase in the willingness to continue relationships, and reflection and pessimistic thinking (which is one component of defensive pessimism) led to a feeling of being fatigued from the effort of considering and respecting the reactions of others. - Japanese Psychological Research, EarlyView.
  

  June 12, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12201   open full text
• Guilt Signals a Crisis of Rejection: Two Types of Individual Differences Related to Social Rejection Have Dissimilar Effects on Guilt and Compensatory Behavior.
  Yoshiya Furukawa, Ken'ichiro Nakashima, Yasuko Morinaga.
  Japanese Psychological Research. June 02, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract We investigated whether feelings of guilt, which signal crises in interpersonal relationships (Baumeister, Stillwell, & Heatherton, 1994), are differently evoked by two types of individual differences in social rejection: rejection detection capability (Kawamoto, Nittono, & Ura, 2015) and rejection sensitivity (Downey & Feldman, 1996). Using the hypothetical scenario method, we found that in situations with a potential risk of being rejected as a consequence of causing another person harm (i.e., harm‐present condition), participants with higher rejection detection capability felt more guilt and engaged in more compensatory behavior towards the victims. In addition, guilt mediated the relationship between rejection detection capability and compensatory behavior. Conversely, in situations with no potential risk of being rejected (i.e., harm‐absent condition), participants with higher rejection sensitivity felt more guilt but did not engage in much compensatory behavior. These results suggest that individual differences in social rejection foster different responses to specific threats. - Japanese Psychological Research, EarlyView.
  

  June 02, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12199   open full text
• Are Line Lengths Critical to the Discrimination of Axisymmetric Pairs of Figures from Disoriented Identical Pairs?
  Fumio Kanbe.
  Japanese Psychological Research. May 30, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract I examined whether the lack of a difference in line lengths made the discrimination of axisymmetric (Ax) pairs of figures from disoriented identical (Idr) pairs difficult. Three basic pair types were prepared: Idr, Ax, and nonidentical/nonaxisymmetric (Nd) pairs. To avoid confusion arising from structural differences, all pairs of figures were set to be mutually isomorphic. Two figures of a pair were controlled to have the same line lengths of respective figural components (Experiment 1) or the same lengths of individual line segments (Experiment 2) in experiments where participants decided if the figures were the same/different. Experiment 1 showed longer latencies for Ax pairs than for Nd pairs, indicating that these feature values alone did not cause difficulty in discrimination. Experiment 2 showed that only Nd pairs with all line segments having the same lengths for the two figures had the same latencies as Ax pairs. The sameness of individual line segments in simple pairs of figures made discrimination difficult. - Japanese Psychological Research, EarlyView.
  

  May 30, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12200   open full text
• Cerebral Hemodynamic Response During Concealment of Information About a Mock Crime: Application of a General Linear Model With an Adaptive Hemodynamic Response Function.
  Kiyomitsu Niioka, Minako Uga, Taihei Nagata, Tatsuya Tokuda, Ippeita Dan, Keita Ochi.
  Japanese Psychological Research. May 02, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract We investigated cerebral hemodynamic response during concealment of information about a mock crime using functional near‐infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Participants either committed a mock crime or not and then were presented with a randomized series of crime‐relevant questions and crime‐irrelevant questions in a standard concealment task. Participants in the guilty group concealed crime‐relevant information about the mock crime but those in the innocent group did not. Recorded fNIRS timeline data sets were analyzed within the framework of a general linear model approach with an adaptive hemodynamic response function. In this analysis, we affirmed that an adaptive temporal parameter in hemodynamic response function during the concealment task differs from a conventionally used temporal parameter. Group analysis showed that the guilty group elicited greater hemodynamic response during the concealment task than did the innocent group. These results suggest that both the frontal cluster, including frontopolar and orbitofrontal areas, and the temporal cluster are involved in concealment. We also identified a potential application for fNIRS to detect concealment in criminal investigations. - Japanese Psychological Research, Volume 60, Issue 4, Page 311-326, October 2018.
  

  May 02, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12194   open full text
• Near‐Infrared Spectroscopy Detects Prefrontal Activities During Rorschach Inkblot Method.
  Naoki Aizawa, Masahiro Ishibashi, Yugo Nakamura, Chigusa Uchiumi, Kiyoshi Makita, Masahiro Iwakiri.
  Japanese Psychological Research. April 22, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract The present research investigated activities in the prefrontal cortex while performing the Rorschach inkblot method (RIM) using functional near‐infrared spectroscopy. Participants who had no history of mental illness or external head injury were presented with three International RIM Cards (I, IV, V) for 30 s each and asked to identify what they looked like. In addition, a picture task was conducted, in which simple pictures were used as visual stimuli and participants were asked to say what they were. Results showed significant increase of oxyhemoglobin over time with nearly all measurement channels on the RIM task. The volume changes in oxyhemoglobin during both the middle and late segments of the RIM task were more significant than those of the picture task in almost all channels with the exception of no significant difference in the middle with a few right lateral channels. With regard to deoxyhemoglobin, on the RIM task, a significant decrease was observed with nearly all channels, but only in some of the task segments. These results are then discussed in regards to the function of the prefrontal cortex. - Japanese Psychological Research, Volume 60, Issue 4, Page 242-250, October 2018.
  

  April 22, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12195   open full text
• Perception and Expressing Habits of Smiling and Angry Expressions Modulated by Facial Physical Attractiveness in Asian Female Persons.
  Miao Song, Keizo Shinomori, Qian Qian.
  Japanese Psychological Research. April 20, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract In this study, we investigated the effects of facial physical attractiveness on perception and expressing habit of smiling and angry expressions. In experiment 1, 20 participants rated 60 photo subjects’ smiling and angry expressions of uncontrolled physical expression configuration. The results showed that for the angry faces, the perceived expression intensity and the expression naturalness in the attractive group were significantly stronger than those in the unattractive group; for the smiling faces, this attractiveness bias was not observed. In experiment 2, using artificial expressions made by an identical expression template, interestingly, the perceived expression intensity and the expression naturalness of the smiling faces in the attractive group were stronger than those in the unattractive group, while the impression strength of anger between the two groups was approximately the same. A comparison of the two observations suggests that facial physical attractiveness can enhance the perceived intensity of a smiling expression but not an angry expression, and that the inconsistencies between the two experiments are due to the difference of expressing habits between unattractive and attractive persons. These results have implications as regards the effect of facial attractiveness on the expressing habits of expression senders and the person’s development of social skills. - Japanese Psychological Research, EarlyView.
  

  April 20, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12198   open full text
• Removing Task‐Induced Superficial‐Tissue Hemodynamics and Head Motion‐Induced Artifacts in Functional Near‐Infrared Spectroscopy.
  Hiroki Nakamura, Takanori Sato, Isao Nambu, Yasuhiro Wada.
  Japanese Psychological Research. April 18, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Functional near‐infrared spectroscopy, a neuroimaging tool used to measure brain activity, is associated with two different types of artifacts: (a) task‐induced superficial‐tissue hemodynamic artifacts derived from the scalp; and (b) motion artifacts caused by head motions. Recently, a simple and easy‐to‐use method, based on a general linear model incorporating superficial hemodynamics model estimated from short‐probe distance channels using principal component analysis, was proposed to remove task‐induced superficial‐tissue artifacts. In the present study, we examined the effectiveness of this method in removing task‐induced and head motion‐induced superficial‐tissue hemodynamics. Thus, we conducted a motor experiment where participants were asked to perform grasping movements. During some sessions, head motions were generated in order to introduce motion artifacts. Although the removal of motion artifacts was not perfect, we found that analyses including the first and second principal component (estimated from short‐channels) showed a tendency to provide accurate detection of brain activity. This finding demonstrated the possibility of conducting effective analysis of functional near‐infrared spectroscopy using general linear model and short‐channels. - Japanese Psychological Research, Volume 60, Issue 4, Page 337-346, October 2018.
  

  April 18, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12196   open full text
• Social Exclusion and Disengagement of Covert Attention from Social Signs: The Moderating Role of Fear of Negative Evaluation.
  Hiroaki Tanaka, Tomoko Ikegami.
  Japanese Psychological Research. April 17, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Previous research has demonstrated that social exclusion motivates individuals with low fear of negative evaluation (FNE) to pay attention to signs of social acceptance, but it does not motivate individuals with high FNE to do so. However, it remains unclear whether this finding reflects overt or covert attentional bias because the researchers employed a dot‐probe task. In order to resolve this ambiguity, the present study solely assessed disengagement of covert attention from social signs after exclusion manipulation in an experiment with university students (N = 60). As a result, exclusion delayed disengagement of covert attention from facial stimuli regardless of their types of expression for participants with low FNE, but such delay was not observed for participants with high FNE. The result indicated that social exclusion enhances attention to social information in individuals with low FNE, whereas it does not in individuals with high FNE. We discuss the possibility that a decline in inclusionary status affects overt and covert attentional processes differently. - Japanese Psychological Research, EarlyView.
  

  April 17, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12197   open full text
• Is Detecting a Target in a Compound Geometric Shape Influenced by Stimulus Density? A Developmental Study.
  Hamidreza Pouretemad, Setareh Mokhtari.
  Japanese Psychological Research. March 31, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract We studied the pattern of performance in elementary school children and adults detecting a target in compound geometric shapes. The target was randomly presented at the global, local, or neither level of compound shapes with different elemental density. A significant difference between the pattern of performance in children and adults emerged when the geometric shape was constructed with fewer constituent parts. That is, children showed difficulties in recognizing the global level while adults could efficiently process it. We suggest that global processing continues to develop as children grow older. Also, integration ability could benefit from increasing familiarity with the geometric concepts. - Japanese Psychological Research, EarlyView.
  

  March 31, 2018   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12193   open full text
• Preschoolers’ Distributive Justice When They Distribute Few Total Rewards in a Third‐Party Task.
  Kiyomi Tsutsu.
  Japanese Psychological Research. October 06, 2017
  Five‐year‐old children were presented with a story in which one character made three origami stars and another made nine. Then the participants were asked to distribute small rewards to each character (“Three” or “Four” candies), and were told to use all the candies (“All” instruction), or that “You can leave some candies, if you don't want to use all the candies (‘Partial’ instruction).” In Study 1, almost all children distributed the candies equally (Four). Some participants (28.1%) refused the All instruction for Three, and then equally distributed the candies. They conducted equality allocations in three or all four of the conditions, giving a ratio for “Thorough Egalitarians” of 20–30%. Study 2 used looking‐time measures to assess participants’ judgment. Children looked longer at the amounts of production of two characters in condition Three than in condition Four. Allocation patterns were almost identical to Study 1, but the condition “Partial‐Three” results were not reproduced. The paper discusses the types of egalitarian behavior and the associated production and reward quantities observed.

  October 06, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12170   open full text
• Psychological Abuse Experienced in Groups Scale: Psychometric Properties of the Japanese Version.
  Omar Saldaña, Álvaro Rodríguez‐Carballeira, Carmen Almendros, Kimiaki Nishida.
  Japanese Psychological Research. August 21, 2017
  The purpose of this study was to adapt the Psychological Abuse Experienced in Groups Scale (PAEGS) for use in the Japanese population. This scale evaluates the frequency with which an individual has experienced psychologically abusive behaviors within a group. A questionnaire was administered to 130 former members of abusive groups and to a comparison sample composed of 124 former members of non‐abusive groups. The main results showed a one‐dimensional factor structure and an adequate reliability score. Significant correlations were found between the PAEGS and a group abusiveness measure, providing evidence of convergent validity. In addition, high discriminatory power was found, determining an optimal cut‐off point to distinguish between abusive experiences and non‐abusive experiences within groups. The Japanese version of the PAEGS is able to overcome limitations of previous instruments intended to assess the phenomenon, as sufficient empirical evidence is found for its use in research. In addition, it can be useful in clinical and legal contexts to assess the degree of psychological abuse experienced by Japanese people during their involvement in certain groups.

  August 21, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12166   open full text
• Do Emotions after Receiving Test Results Predict Review Activities? An Intra‐Individual Analysis.
  Masayuki Suzuki, Kosuke Akasaka.
  Japanese Psychological Research. August 17, 2017
  In the present study, we examined intra‐individual relations among emotions when receiving test results and subsequent test review activities, and the direct and moderating effects of perceptions of test value. The participants, 90 first‐year students at a private girls’ secondary school, self‐reported their present emotional state immediately after receiving their test results and their test review activities 1 week after the tests were returned. The same survey was conducted on four occasions. Results of multilevel analyses indicated that emotions experienced when receiving test results did not predict subsequent learning behavior. The results also showed that relations among emotions and review activities differed across students. Although we investigated whether such individual differences in relations might be attributed to perceptions of test value, no moderating effect could be observed. Furthermore, improvement‐oriented test mindsets were found to be positive predictors of review activities by investigating the direct effect of perceptions of test value. These findings suggest that modifying students’ perceptions of test value may promote appropriate learning behavior.

  August 17, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12165   open full text
• Trait Emotional Intelligence, Self‐Reported Affect, and Salivary Alpha‐Amylase on Working Days and a Non‐Working Day.
  Hiroyuki Toyama, Saija Mauno.
  Japanese Psychological Research. July 26, 2017
  This study examined the relationship between trait emotional intelligence (EI) and variation in psychological (positive affect: PA, negative affect: NA) and psychophysiological (salivary alpha‐amylase: sAA) indicators among Japanese employees over 3 consecutive days (working day 1, non‐working day, working day 2). The analyses revealed that higher trait EI was associated across the days with higher PA, but not with NA. Moreover, diurnal sAA levels were lower in the high trait EI group than in the low trait EI group on the intervening non‐working day, and this difference between the EI groups continued to show a tendency to significance on working day 2. The results indicate that higher EI may be related to the preservation of higher levels of PA and lower levels of sympathetic activity in recovery in the naturalistic condition.

  July 26, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12163   open full text
• Assimilation Effects of Eye Shadow on Facial Colors.
  Yoshie Kiritani, Yurina Komuro, Akane Okazaki, Ruriko Takano, Noriko Ookubo.
  Japanese Psychological Research. July 21, 2017
  Makeup can change facial complexion, making it of interest both practically and for empirical research on perception. We examined the assimilation effect of eye shadow on complexion using two series of eye shadows: typical colors that are not evenly saturated and colors with saturation as even as possible. Twenty participants assessed the degree of redness in reddish faces, yellowness in yellowish faces, and lightness in both faces via paired comparisons. The results indicated that: (a) the reddish face was perceived as redder when it had eye shadow of pinkish and purplish colors or reddish saturated colors instead of containing yellowish components; (b) the yellowish face became less yellow with colors without a greenish or yellowish component; and (c) except for the lighter yellowish shade, eye shadow made the face perceptually darker. We confirmed the assimilation effect of eye shadow on complexion and showed differences in perceptual hue change according to the original face colors.

  July 21, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12164   open full text
• The Relationship between Pain Catastrophizing and Headache‐Related Disability: The Mediating Role of Pain Intensity.
  Fereshte Sadat Mortazavi Nasiri, Shahla Pakdaman, Mohsen Dehghani, Mansoureh Togha.
  Japanese Psychological Research. July 11, 2017
  Migraine is one of the most frequent types of headache that impacts patients’ function significantly and might be disabling. The purpose of this research was to test the effects of pain catastrophizing along with the mediating role of pain intensity on headache‐related disability in migraine patients. This study was descriptive–correlational research. To implement it, 178 patients with migraine selected through convenience sampling filled out three questionnaires: the Headache Disability Inventory (HDI), the Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS), and the Visual Analog Scale for Pain (VAS). To test the mediating role of pain intensity in the relationship between catastrophizing and headache‐related disability, regression analysis was employed. Pain catastrophizing was positively correlated with headache‐related disability and pain intensity. The proposed model showed that more frequent catastrophizing was associated with higher headache‐related disability in patients with migraine, and pain intensity mediated this association. According to our results, there seems to be a high rate of pain intensity and catastrophizing as a maladaptive coping strategy among migraine patients with headache‐related disability. Therefore, these variables should be considered in researches and specifically in treatment procedures.

  July 11, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12162   open full text
• Functions of Career Resilience Against Reality Shock, Focusing on Full‐time Employees During Their First Year of Work.
  Makiko Kodama.
  Japanese Psychological Research. June 21, 2017
  The purpose of this study was to examine the role of career resilience in coping with reality shock. Career resilience was defined as psychological traits that help individuals to cope with career risks and promote their own career development. It consisted of five factors: (a) ability to cope with problems and changes; (b) social skills; (c) interest in novelty; (d) optimism about the future; and (e) willingness to help others. Full‐time employees in their first year of employment (N = 233) participated in an online survey to measure career resilience, reality shock, and the degree of career development. The study found that coping with changes and being optimistic about the future could prevent the experience of reality shock. The result also suggested that good social skills prevented experience of reality shock from inhibiting career development.

  June 21, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12161   open full text
• Being Watched by Anthropomorphized Objects Affects Charitable Donation in Religious People.
  Yuki Miyazaki.
  Japanese Psychological Research. June 10, 2017
  This study assessed the effect of bottom‐up visual cues—the cues of being watched—from anthropomorphized (face‐like) everyday objects on religious people's prosocial behavior. As religious people are more likely than less‐religious people to perceive faces in everyday objects and as perception of face‐like objects promotes prosociality, it was expected that religious people would become more prosocial when they perceived face‐like objects. To test the hypothesis, the study replicated a past finding in a Japanese sample in which religious people tended to perceive a face in everyday objects. Next, results showed that the decision to donate in religious people (compared to less‐religious people) was increased when a face‐like object was displayed with charitable appeals. This effect was not observed with a non‐face‐like object. The current study indicates that interaction with the surrounding environment plays an important role in motivating prosocial behavior among religious people.

  June 10, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12158   open full text
• Are Foraging Patterns in Humans Related to Working Memory and Inhibitory Control?
  Ómar I. Jóhannesson, Árni Kristjánsson, Ian M. Thornton.
  Japanese Psychological Research. March 02, 2017
  In previous studies we have shown that human foraging patterns appear to be constrained by attention. However, we also noted clear individual differences in foraging ability, where some individuals can apparently keep more than one target template in mind during foraging. Here, we examine whether such individual differences relate to more general working memory capacity and/or the ability to inhibit a primed, or prepotent response. We had three main goals. First, to replicate general patterns of attention‐constrained foraging. Second, to verify that some individuals appear immune to such constraints. Third, to investigate a possible link between individual foraging style and working memory abilities measured on a digit‐span task and inhibitory control measured with a Stroop task. In sum, we replicated the finding that foraging differs greatly by whether foraging targets are defined by a single feature or a conjunction of features, but also again found that some observers show little differences in foraging between the two conditions, seemingly shifting with ease between search templates. In contrast, neither working memory nor Stroop performance were reliable predictors of these individual differences in foraging pattern. We discuss the implications of the findings for theories of visual attention.

  March 02, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12152   open full text
• Haptic Search in Divided Areas: Optimizing the Number of Divisions.
  Hirotsugu Kaga, Chihiro Kawaguchi, Midori Mishina, Shinichi Kita, Tetsuya Watanabe.
  Japanese Psychological Research. March 01, 2017
  The present study investigates the efficiency of haptic search facilitated by the division of the searchable area. Previous studies have shown that scales provided around tactile maps for blind persons can shorten the search time for tactile symbols on the maps, but the optimum number of divisions has not been found. We conducted an experiment in which maps with different numbers of divisions were presented to blindfolded participants. The search times for tactile targets on the maps were measured and a movie that recorded searching behavior was analyzed. Our results indicate that scales with 3 × 4 divisions minimize search time, and the movie analysis reveals that this optimization is determined by the time of both scale‐counting and target‐searching. This finding elucidates the manner of human haptic search and should be utilized for the optimization of automated tactile map creation.

  March 01, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12151   open full text
• The Effect of Mental Simulation (Process‐ Versus Outcome‐Focus) on Extension Evaluation:A Bipolarized Fit Perception.
  Yeung‐Jo Kim, Sie‐Yeoun Song.
  Japanese Psychological Research. February 24, 2017
  The present research investigates perceived fit effects according to the focus that consumers place when evaluating brand extensions. Process‐focus encourages consumers to focus their thoughts on the process of reaching an outcome, thereby affecting extension evaluations on the basis of the process similarity between the original brand and its extensions. Conversely, outcome‐focus encourages consumers to focus their thoughts on the final outcome, thereby affecting extension evaluations on the basis of the final outcome similarity between the original brand and its extensions. With this conceptual framework, the present research demonstrated that for the process‐focus condition, the extension was evaluated more favorably when the similarity between the process of the original brand and the process of its extension was present (Study 1). By contrast, for the outcome‐focus condition, the extension was evaluated more favorably when the similarity between the final outcome of the original brand and the final outcome of its extension was present (Study 2).

  February 24, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12150   open full text
• Learning “What” and “Where” in Visual Search.
  Tal Makovski.
  Japanese Psychological Research. February 20, 2017
  Visual search is facilitated when observers search through repeated displays. This effect, termed contextual cueing (CC), reflects the exceptional ability of our cognitive system to utilize regularities embedded in the environment. Recent studies that tested visual search with real‐world objects found that CC takes place even in heterogeneous search displays, but only when the identities (“what”) and locations (“where”) of the objects are both repeated. The purpose of the current study was to test whether the repetition of both “what” and “where” is not only necessary but also sufficient for CC. Consistent with previous results, Experiment 1 found robust CC when both the “what” and “where” information were repeated, and further revealed that the effect was not modulated by the number of search items. In contrast, Experiment 2 showed that the repetition of both objects’ identities and locations did not benefit the search when the two were not bound together. CC was also absent in Experiment 3, where the objects’ identities and locations were repeated together, however, target locations varied randomly. Together these results suggest that CC with real‐world objects is robust, but critically depends on “what” and “where” binding as well as context‐target associations.

  February 20, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12146   open full text
• Implicit Learning of Spatial Configuration Occurs without Eye Movement.
  Yoko Higuchi, Jun Saiki.
  Japanese Psychological Research. February 14, 2017
  Studies have demonstrated that eye movements enhance visual memory. However, the role of eye movement in implicit learning is not clear. We investigated whether implicit learning of spatial configuration requires eye movement using the contextual cueing paradigm. Eye movements were restricted by instructing participants to maintain fixation on the center of a display during a visual search. The results demonstrated that contextual cueing occurs even without eye movements. Furthermore, contextual cueing effects were obtained more rapidly when eye movements were restricted compared to when eye movements were allowed. The findings suggest that eye movements mediate the learning progress in contextual cueing: stabilization of spatial layout representation by restriction of eye movements induces a rapid learning of configuration.

  February 14, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12147   open full text
• Spatial Correspondence Learning is Critical for the Sequence Effects of Symbolic Cueing.
  Qian Qian, Feng Wang, Miao Song, Yong Feng, Keizo Shinomori.
  Japanese Psychological Research. February 07, 2017
  Attention orienting has been found to be influenced by the previous cueing status in a spatial cueing paradigm. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the cue predictive values or the spatial correspondence learning between cues and targets could influence the sequence effect of symbolic cueing. The findings revealed that the predictive values of arrow or word cues do not lead to different sequence effects, but that visually asymmetrical letter cues, which allow spatial correspondence learning between cues and targets, induce stronger sequence effects than visually symmetrical letter cues. In addition, visually symmetrical directional word cues can induce sequence effects. The results suggest that spatial correspondence learning, although not obligatory, is critical for the sequence effects of symbolic cueing. The findings support the feature‐integration hypothesis, rather than the strategic adjustments account.

  February 07, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12148   open full text
• Eye Movements Converge on Vanishing Points during Visual Search.
  Yoshiyuki Ueda, Yusuke Kamakura, Jun Saiki.
  Japanese Psychological Research. January 19, 2017
  The vanishing point seems to be a useful cue for understanding scenes at a glance. The closer the objects are, the smaller their sizes become. Because the resolution of central vision is higher than that of peripheral vision, seeing a vanishing point enables individuals to perceive the whole scene. Here, we examined whether vanishing points attract eye movements during visual search. In Experiment 1, we conducted a free‐viewing task to examine whether vanishing points play a significant role. In Experiment 2, the participants searched for a Gabor patch that was embedded in manmade or natural scenes. In Experiment 3, to investigate the robustness of the vanishing point effect, visual search was conducted using simpler geometric backgrounds. We observed that eye movements converged around vanishing points, and that the first fixations are also located around them. These results suggest that vanishing points as well as salient locations can capture eye movements, and eye movements are guided by such environmental structures.

  January 19, 2017   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12144   open full text
• Supporting Japanese Mothers of Children with ADHD: Cultural Adaptation of the New Forest Parent Training Programme.
  Shizuka Shimabukuro, David Daley, Margaret Thompson, Cathy Laver‐Bradbury, Emi Nakanishi, Gail Tripp.
  Japanese Psychological Research. December 14, 2016
  International practice guidelines recommend medication and behavioral intervention as evidenced‐based treatments for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Currently in Japan, the availability of non‐pharmacological interventions for ADHD is limited. We report the results of a pilot and a proof‐of‐concept study for a new behavioral intervention for Japanese mothers of children with ADHD. The pilot study delivered a standard six‐session behavioral intervention and two parent‐support sessions. Participants approved the group format and requested additional support to change parenting practices and behavioral strategies targeting ADHD symptoms. For the proof‐of‐concept study, the intervention was revised to include five sessions of pre‐intervention support followed by six sessions of the New Forest Parent Training Programme (NFPP), an evidence‐based intervention for ADHD. The revised intervention, NFPP‐Japan, was associated with reductions in the mothers’ reports of children's ADHD symptoms and aggression, more effective parenting practices, and reduced parenting stress. The pilot and proof‐of‐concept studies indicate that it is possible to successfully modify Western behavioral interventions for Japanese mothers and to justify a randomized controlled trial evaluation of the NFPP‐Japan, which is currently underway.

  December 14, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12140   open full text
• Attentional Capture by Emotional Stimuli: Manipulation of Emotional Valence by the Sample Pre‐rating Method.
  Yohei Ono, Yasutomi Taniguchi.
  Japanese Psychological Research. December 14, 2016
  Eye movements directed at emotional and neutral pictures were investigated. Participants were instructed to fixate on a target and avoid looking at a non‐target. Results of trials consisting of emotional and neutral pictures were analyzed based on participants’ evaluations of the stimuli before the experiment. Results indicated that the number and duration of fixations were larger and longer for targets than for non‐targets. Further, the probability of first fixation was less for neutral targets than for emotional targets. This suggests that unpleasant pictures capture visual attention and that the attentional orienting is subject to automatic response. The possibility that top‐down processes of visual attention may be involved in attentional capture was also discussed.

  December 14, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12142   open full text
• Mediating Role of Memory of Another Person's Choicein Social Influence on Preference.
  Koyo Nakamura, Hideaki Kawabata.
  Japanese Psychological Research. December 10, 2016
  We often tend to fit our subjective preference with those of others after merely being faced with what other people prefer. This is known as social conformity. However, it is still unclear how the impact of such a social influence on subjective preference is modulated by the personal characteristics of the other person (e.g., whether the person is trustworthy) and the explicit memory of those personal characteristics (e.g., remembering who evaluated the objects). To clarify explicit memory's underlying role regarding social influence, we asked participants to evaluate their preference for abstract paintings both before and after observing binary choices made by others whose behaviors could be labeled as trustworthy, neutral, or untrustworthy. The results showed the following: (a) even without explicit memory of who made a choice and which painting was chosen, the participants preferred chosen over unchosen paintings; and (b) such preference changes were modulated by the subjective trustworthiness of others only when they explicitly remembered who made a choice.

  December 10, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12138   open full text
• Associations of Trait Emotional Intelligence with Social Support, Work Engagement, and Creativity in Japanese Eldercare Nurses.
  Hiroyuki Toyama, Saija Mauno.
  Japanese Psychological Research. December 06, 2016
  Work‐related resources can be positive antecedents of employee work engagement (WE) and creativity. Although trait emotional intelligence (EI) and social support may be crucial resources in nursing, their relationships with WE and creativity remain unclear. Hence, with special focus on the role of trait EI, we examined this relationship by applying the job demands‐resources (JD‐R) model. The participants were 489 eldercare nurses in Japan (female: n = 401; male: n = 88; age = 39.5 ± 11.0 years). The results showed positive associations between EI and the other studied variables. Furthermore, moderated mediation analyses revealed that higher trait EI enhanced the positive association among the triad of social support, WE, and creativity. The findings provide additional evidence that, in nurses, trait EI may be a noteworthy personal resource for creativity in the relationship between social support and WE.

  December 06, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12139   open full text
• Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration in Japan: Controlling for the Big Five Personality Traits.
  Takuma Nishimura, Takashi Suzuki.
  Japanese Psychological Research. September 13, 2016
  Abstract: The present study investigated the function of satisfaction and frustration of the basic psychological needs – autonomy, competence, and relatedness – that contribute to subjective well‐being (life‐satisfaction, vitality, and depression) through a back‐translation procedure of the Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration Scale (BPNSFS). A total of 564 Japanese undergraduates (356 males, 205 females, three unknown; M age = 18.61 years, SD = 1.48) participated in a questionnaire survey. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the BPNSFS had the same six‐factor structure as that found in the original version. Structural equation modeling showed that satisfaction of each of the three needs contributed to the prediction of subjective well‐being (life satisfaction and vitality), whereas frustration of each need uniquely contributed to the prediction of ill‐being (depressed affect). These results support previous findings found in Belgium, China, the USA, and Peru, confirming that satisfaction of basic psychological needs represents a critical element for healthy functioning across cultures. However, controlling for the effects of the Big Five personality traits indicates the possible over‐estimation for the functions of the needs while clarifying these roles.

  September 13, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12131   open full text
• Fitness of Job Type and Management by Objectives: Mediating Effects of Perception of Effectiveness and Goal Commitment and Moderating Effects of Supervisor's Behavior.
  Saori Yanagizawa, Hisataka Furukawa.
  Japanese Psychological Research. September 13, 2016
  Abstract: This study investigated the influence of job type (line or staff) on perceptions of management‐by‐objectives (MBO) effectiveness, goal commitment, and goal‐attainment behavior, as well as mediating effects of perceptions of MBO effectiveness and goal commitment and moderating effects of supervisor behavior. Participants were 152 employees of a factory that manufactures drugs for a Japanese pharmaceutical company. The primary duties of line personnel involved production. The duties of staff personnel who supported production included supplying materials and production planning. Results indicated that line personnel perceived MBO as a more effective system for improving individual performance and showed higher goal commitment and more active behavior related to goals than staff personnel. Although perception of MBO effectiveness was related to goal commitment, it had no mediating effect. Goal commitment mediated between job type and goal‐attainment behavior. Supervisors’ goal‐setting behavior had different positive effects on goal commitment and goal‐attainment behavior for those in line and staff positions. MBO was a better fit for line positions than staff positions. However, supervisor behavior increased goal‐attainment behavior in staff positions. The results indicated that it is important for supervisors in a business organization to operate a management system flexibly.

  September 13, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12128   open full text
• Consumers’ Response to an Advertisement Using Brand Popularity in a Foreign Market.
  Ji‐Hern Kim, Dongwon Min.
  Japanese Psychological Research. September 08, 2016
  Abstract: This research examined how domestic consumers respond to an advertisement using brand popularity in a foreign market. By using structural equation modeling, it shows that the consumers’ response can change as a function of three characteristics of brand popularity in a foreign market: (a) expertise of foreign consumers, (b) similarity between domestic consumers and foreign consumers, and (c) animosity to a foreign country. Meanwhile, the similarity effect is found to be stronger for high‐preference heterogeneity than low‐preference heterogeneity. This research documents the importance of understanding the underlying mechanism to determine the effects of brand popularity in a foreign market on brand attitude and purchase intention.

  September 08, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12129   open full text
• Emotion Regulation and Coping Strategies in Pedagogical Students with Different Attachment Styles.
  Simona Prosen, Helena Smrtnik Vitulić.
  Japanese Psychological Research. September 06, 2016
  Abstract: Emotion regulation (ER) and coping strategies were compared in 242 pedagogical students from the Faculty of Education, University of Ljubljana, with different attachment styles: secure (51.3%), fearful (31.9%), preoccupied (14.2%), and dismissive (2.7%). The students’ ages ranged from 18 to 24 years ( M  = 19.02; SD  = .92), and the majority were female (95.0%). They completed three questionnaires assessing their attachment styles and their use of ER and coping strategies. It was determined that the students used the majority of ER and coping strategies sometimes. Somewhat different patterns in the use of ER and coping strategies were, however, present in each attachment‐based group. Significant differences between these groups appeared in their use of the ER strategies of social support, suppression, and comfort eating, and in the coping strategies of seeking social support and escaping or avoiding stressful situations.

  September 06, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12130   open full text
• Impact of School Psychological Environment Variables on Happiness of Korean Youths.
  Ji‐Hye Lee.
  Japanese Psychological Research. September 01, 2016
  Abstract: This study analyzed the structural relationships between school‐related psychological variables (teacher support, learning flow, friendship) and the happiness of Korean youths, and compared structural equation models for middle and high schools. Questionnaire data were collected from students in middle and high schools in 10 cities and provinces of Korea. The final data set from 870 students was analyzed with Amos 20.0. Goodness of fit indices for the hypothetical model were good, and all paths were significant. That is, a model incorporating indirect and direct impact of school‐related psychological environment variables, such as teacher support, learning flow, and friendship, on the happiness of Korean youths is valid. Second, structural equation models for middle and high schools demonstrated significant differences. Therefore, different types of assistance are needed to increase the happiness of students in middle schools and high schools.

  September 01, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12126   open full text
• The Role of Stimulus Type and Semantic Category‐Level Attentional Set in Sustained Inattentional Blindness.
  Yaning Guo, Xuqun You, Ying Li.
  Japanese Psychological Research. August 24, 2016
  Abstract: We examined the effect of the stimulus type and semantic categorization of the unexpected stimulus on sustained Inattentional Blindness (IB). Results showed that observers could establish attentional set based on a higher level of semantic categorization, which tuned one's attention to prioritizing semantic content over others. The unexpected stimulus, congruent with the attended objects in semantic categorization, was more likely to be noticed, whereas the incongruent semantic stimulus seemed to be unseen. Semantic category‐level attentional set played a crucial role in breaking through IB. The semantically congruent Chinese characters stimulus was detected and recognized more often than a semantically congruent picture stimulus, indicating that Chinese characters had more power to attract attention to escape sustained IB than pictures involved in visual processing. Presumably the finding of Chinese characters breaking through IB more easily might be due to the fact that Chinese characters look more distinct from pictures, rather than Chinese characters being processed more easily. Further research should be taken to test the semantic processing efficiency between pictures and Chinese characters in sustained IB.

  August 24, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12127   open full text
• Emotions Evoked by Viewing Pictures may Affect Temporal Aspects of Visual Processing.
  Misa Kobayashi, Makoto Ichikawa.
  Japanese Psychological Research. June 08, 2016
  We examined how impression (such as safety, pleasantness, and impact), as well as emotional arousal and valence, evoked by viewing a picture affects temporal resolution of visual processing and perceived picture duration. In the first experiment as an index of temporal resolution of visual processing, we measured the noticeable duration of a monochrome picture after presenting a color picture. In the second experiment, we measured the duration of the picture presentation, which was equivalent to the duration of the presentation of a gray rectangle that should not evoke specifically safe or pleasant impressions. We found that the minimum duration in which an observer could notice a monochrome image in viewing a dangerous picture was shorter than that in viewing safe pictures. We also found that observers overestimated the duration of the picture presentation in viewing dangerous pictures. However, there was no significant correlation between the results of the two experiments. These results suggest that the basis for improvement of the temporal resolution in visual processing differs from that for the elongation of the perceived duration.

  June 08, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12125   open full text
• Yoh Sugisaki, a Pioneering Educational Psychologist in Japan.
  Keiichiro Tsuji.
  Japanese Psychological Research. May 12, 2016
  Yoh Sugisaki (1877–1943) was a psychologist who worked at Nagano Normal School from 1916 to 1939. He introduced a series of laboratory exercises into his psychology lectures and encouraged students to cooperate with each other in data analysis and report writing. He inspired students who were losing sight of their goal and motivated them to concentrate on further learning. In Nagano, he organized self‐training groups for uncertified teachers in local elementary schools, providing up‐to‐date learning and research experience and emphasizing the significance of class planning management and the understanding of children's individuality. On the basis of these activities, Sugisaki formulated a view of education that combined psychology, pedagogy, and religion. Because of his remarkable contributions to elementary education, he was certainly a pioneering educational psychologist in Japan.

  May 12, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12118   open full text
• Japanese History of the Psychology of Fine Arts and Aesthetics.
  Ayumu Arakawa.
  Japanese Psychological Research. May 05, 2016
  In this paper we discuss the history of Japanese psychology of fine arts and aesthetics across five distinct periods: (a) the first expansion of arts psychology research (1907–1932); (b) children's drawings and Gestalt psychology (approximately 1932–1947); (c) the second expansion of arts psychology research, the psychoanalysis of art and art as a target for Gestalt and social psychology (1948–1967); (d) art therapy and the psychology of aesthetics using the semantic differential method and factor analysis (approximately 1968–1996); and (e) the third expansion of arts psychology research, Kansei and neuroaesthetics (1996–). Japanese arts psychology has been altered by the reformation of the discipline, and by the implementation of new methods and theories from overseas. The research targets, such as traditional arts (calligraphy, rock gardens, etc.) and pop culture (“Kawaii,” “Hello Kitty,” etc.), have appeared as Japanese original contributions to the psychology of the arts.

  May 05, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12119   open full text
• CIE Libraries Supporting the Development of Psychology During the Allied Occupation in Japan (1945–1952).
  Tomoko Suzuki, Ayumu Arakawa, Shinichi Koizumi, Miki Takasuna.
  Japanese Psychological Research. May 04, 2016
  During the Allied occupation of Japan after the Second World War, the Civil Information and Educational Section (CIE) Libraries played an important role in providing new foreign books and journals in the field of psychology. This paper first gives an overview of the history of psychology in Japan around the time of the Second World War. Subsequently, important excerpts from an oral history with Japanese psychologists are presented. Finally, based on information from this oral history, a survey of the books on psychology in the CIE Yokohama Library was conducted. Results of the survey indicate that CIE Libraries offered foreign books on topics in applied psychology, such as clinical psychology. The opportunities provided by this library had a profound impact on psychological study and practice in Japan. As many materials from this period are missing, including all books and journals from the CIE Hibiya Library, further research should include oral history from psychologists who visited these libraries.

  May 04, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12117   open full text
• The Sanitary‐Mask Effect on Perceived Facial Attractiveness.
  Yuki Miyazaki, Jun‐Ichiro Kawahara.
  Japanese Psychological Research. April 13, 2016
  Currently, some Japanese women use a sanitary mask to hide their faces when not wearing makeup, perhaps because they believe that they are more attractive (or less ugly) when wearing a sanitary mask than when not wearing makeup. The present study examined the effect of wearing a sanitary mask on the perception of facial attractiveness. We manipulated the presence or absence of a mask in the main experiments or an occluder (e.g., notebook) in control experiments and asked participants to rate facial images. The results revealed that attractive faces wearing a sanitary mask were perceived as less attractive than the same faces without the mask, contrary to Japanese women's belief. This is the first study to demonstrate a new phenomenon, the sanitary‐mask effect, in which observers underestimate the physical attractiveness of a mask‐wearing face. Importantly, the pattern of the results of perceived attractiveness was substantially altered when a control object occluded the faces. This suggests that facial occlusion by a sanitary mask has a unique effect, due to occlusion and unhealthiness priming.

  April 13, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12116   open full text
• A Background Layer in Aesthetic Experience: Cross‐cultural Affective Symbolism.
  Despina Stamatopoulou, Gerald C. Cupchik, Toshihiko Amemiya, Michelle Hilscher, Tomoko Miyahara.
  Japanese Psychological Research. April 13, 2016
  This study explored the role of affective/physiognomic perception in emotion perception, and its contribution to meaning construction in the absence of any representation. Following Werner's microgenetic paradigm, by peeling away the fossilized representational level in the drawings, we attempted to link both the “subjective” emotion experience of the artists, articulated in line‐drawings that functioned as the spectators’ perceptual stimulus. Subsequently, a cross‐cultural study was performed using 12 non‐representational, emotion drawings as experimental stimuli of the emotion at hand, to investigate any correspondence of feeling between spectators (152 Canadian, 48 Greek, and 72 Japanese participants) and emotions expressed in the drawings. The results suggested a relative congruence of feeling reflected in the gross classification of the stimuli, and coordination in the organization of perceived affect across cultures. Mood‐state and mood‐trait played differential roles in recognition accuracy. Greeks showed impaired classification for negative drawings, not modifying internal structures accordingly to external constraints, and being oversensitive to subjective arousal in the aversive ambiguous stimuli. Japanese coped with aversion in an implicit aesthetic manner, being task oriented while not flattening the experiential impact of the stimuli. Canadians were not insensitive to body cues, but their impact was overridden by the salience of the attended object.

  April 13, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12114   open full text
• Determinants of Integration and Confrontation in Internal Dialogues.
  Małgorzata M. Puchalska‐Wasyl.
  Japanese Psychological Research. April 13, 2016
  Interest in the distinction between integrative and confrontational internal dialogues has been growing, as research suggests numerous positive functions of the former compared to the latter. The article proposes a theoretical approach to integration and confrontation in internal dialogue and an empirical method of measuring these processes. Exploratory research is also presented that seeks to identify personality‐related and situational determinants of integration and confrontation in internal dialogue simulating social relationships. Canonical correlation analysis did not establish personality determinants but it did reveal situational determinants (understood as cognitive interpretation of the enacted situation) behind integration and confrontation in internal dialogue. Perceiving the internal interlocutor as similar to the dialogue's author is associated with the author's integrative attitude. An increase in the wishfulness of the dialogue is accompanied by an increase in the author's confrontational attitude and the interlocutor's integrative attitude.

  April 13, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12115   open full text
• Personality Change from Life Experiences: Moderation Effect of Attachment Security.
  Tetsuya Kawamoto.
  Japanese Psychological Research. February 05, 2016
  This study focused on effects of life experiences on change in personality and moderation effects of attachment security on the life experience influences. With a sample of Japanese university students (N = 1,000; 679 female; M = 19.72; SD = 1.26; age range, 18–25 years), the Big Five personality traits were assessed twice. The assessment interval was 20 weeks. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analyses revealed that there were large between‐individual differences in change and stability of the Big Five personality traits, which were accounted for by the amount of daily positive and negative life experiences during the interval period. Moreover, multi‐group HLM analyses indicated that the life experience effects were moderated by participants' attachment security at Time 1. These findings suggest that the accumulation of small daily experiences may work for the personality development of university students and that environmental influences may vary by individual susceptibility to experiences, like attachment security.

  February 05, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12110   open full text
• The Moderating Effects of Age on the Relationships of Self‐Compassion, Self‐Esteem, and Mental Health.
  Soodeok Hwang, Geunyoung Kim, Jae‐Won Yang, Eunjoo Yang.
  Japanese Psychological Research. February 05, 2016
  This study investigated the interactive effects of self‐compassion, self‐esteem, and age on mental health. Numerous previous studies have found that self‐compassion has a significant positive association with well‐being but most of these studies were conducted with young adults represented by college students. This study extended the previous findings by comparing its distinctive functions in different age groups. A total of 1,813 adults whose age ranged from twenties to fifties (M = 39.28 years, SD = 11.27) completed a questionnaire measuring self‐compassion, self‐esteem, subjective well‐being, and depression. The results of hierarchical regression analysis indicated that the positive relationship between self‐compassion and subjective well‐being was rendered stronger with older adults. In addition, self‐compassion moderated the relationship between self‐esteem and depression regardless of age. These results imply that self‐compassion may be complimentary to self‐esteem in improving mental health, especially for older adults.

  February 05, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12109   open full text
• Chinese‐Speaking Adults' Understanding of Argument Structure.
  Lu Jiang, Etsuko Haryu.
  Japanese Psychological Research. February 05, 2016
  Syntactic constructions roughly correspond to sentence meanings. Jiang and Haryu (2014) found that Chinese children can associate subject‐verb‐object (SVO) constructions with causative events at age 2, but do not always map subject‐verb (SV) constructions to noncausative events, even after reaching 5 years of age. The latter results may be attributed to the fact that Chinese allows argument‐dropping. That is, an SV sentence in Chinese sometimes includes an intransitive verb, but other times includes a transitive verb with the object dropped. This paper investigated Chinese adults' knowledge of syntax‐semantics correspondence. Experiment 1 found that Chinese adults did not always map SV sentences to noncausative events, while they almost always mapped SVO sentences to causative events. Experiment 2 found that they preferred to use SV and SVO constructions to describe noncausative and causative events, respectively. Chinese adults understand that causative and noncausative events should typically be described using transitive and intransitive constructions, respectively. However, when inferring to which event (causative or noncausative) the given sentence should be mapped, their performance seems to be regulated by actual SV sentence usage in Chinese.

  February 05, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12108   open full text
• Cognitive Distortions of Child Molesters on Probation or Parole in Japan.
  Satoshi Katsuta, Kyoko Hazama.
  Japanese Psychological Research. February 05, 2016
  The present study examined cognitive distortions of child molesters on probation or parole in Japan utilizing an 18‐item questionnaire administered in a treatment program conducted by the probation officers. This study analyzed the responses of child molesters (n = 51), non‐child‐molesting sexual offenders (n = 65), and non‐offenders (n = 64). Factor analysis of the responses showed three types of cognitive distortions: Rationalization of Offending Behavior, Minimization of Responsibility for Offending, and Minimization of Victim Harm. Welch's analysis of variance followed by Games‐Howell post hoc tests revealed that the child molesters scored significantly higher than the non‐offender group on the Rationalization of Offending Behavior subscale and the Minimization of Responsibility for Offending subscale, and significantly higher than the non‐child‐molesting sexual offender group on the Minimization of Responsibility for Offending subscale. The authors discuss the meanings of these three types of cognitive distortions and future research issues.

  February 05, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12107   open full text
• A National Survey of Psychology Education Programs and Their Content in Japan.
  Takashi Kusumi, Hiroshi Yama, Kensuke Okada, Satoru Kikuchi, Takahiro Hoshino.
  Japanese Psychological Research. February 05, 2016
  This study reports the results of a national survey of psychology programs in Japan, conducted by the Committee on the Education and Research of the Japanese Psychological Association, based on 443 responses from program heads of 378 colleges, universities, and graduate schools. We analyzed the data by institution and type of degree program. The results indicated that: (a) undergraduate‐level psychological education in Japan is mainly provided by private universities (which account for 71% of all psychology graduates at this level), while Master's (60%) and Ph.D. (83%) programs are mainly provided by national and public universities; (b) the largest groups of faculty members by specialization are in clinical psychology and in developmental and educational psychology; (c) the dominant forms of teaching are lectures and seminars; and (d) most psychology major programs in Japan aim to improve students' academic and generic skills. Finally, we suggest how psychology programs in Japan can reform curriculum and better improve students' academic skills on the basis of their generic skills.

  February 05, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12111   open full text
• Early Psychological Apparatuses Stored in Japan: Imported, Replicated, and Reformed Apparatuses before World War II.
  Hirokazu Yoshimura.
  Japanese Psychological Research. February 05, 2016
  A considerable number of classic psychological apparatuses (early apparatuses) are stored in the former Imperial Universities and a few private universities in Japan. Since 2013, the author has been investigating these classic psychological apparatuses as a member of the Historic Document Preservation Committee of the Japanese Psychological Association (JPA). He recently finished the main investigations and found that the classic apparatuses could be divided into three categories: imported products from European and American companies, replicas of the imported products, and reformed products. The latter two categories of apparatuses were made mainly by four Japanese companies, while a considerable number of the imported apparatuses were made by E. Zimmermann's firm. Although the apparatuses made by Japanese companies were not easy to distinguish from each other (i.e., reformed products from replicas), the author identified the existent replicas. Catalogs from domestic and foreign companies contributed considerably to helping him identify the apparatuses in all of the three categories.

  February 05, 2016   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12112   open full text
• Predicting Driver's Intention Based on Own Vulnerability: A Social Interaction Process between Road Users at an Intersection in Japan.
  Yasunori Kinosada, Shinnosuke Usui.
  Japanese Psychological Research. November 11, 2015
  When road users predict the future movement of an approaching vehicle at an intersection, they need to consider not only the physical environment but also the predicted behavioral intention of the approaching driver. In the present experiments, we asked participants to imagine how a vehicle would approach in a natural traffic environment. In Experiment 1, participants estimated the time‐to‐contact with an approaching vehicle as longer when they were physically vulnerable. In Experiment 2, we confirmed that differences in participants’ eye height did not explain the findings of Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, we asked participants to indicate the last possible moment at which they could cross an intersection in front of an approaching vehicle. Participants left a shorter safety margin when they were more physically vulnerable than the approaching vehicle. The results indicate that road users’ perceived vulnerability is a cue for them to trust the approaching driver's intention to decelerate. This viewpoint is important for interventions to prevent unrealistic trust that an approaching vehicle will avoid an accident and subsequent trust‐based behaviors.

  November 11, 2015   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12099   open full text
• Cognitive Appraisal as a Predictor of Cognitive Emotion Regulation Choice.
  Ryota Sakakibara, Toshihiko Endo.
  Japanese Psychological Research. November 11, 2015
  More attention has recently been focused on how a person may choose their emotion regulation strategies depending on the situation. The present research examined how people cognitively appraised a situation that they had actually encountered in their life and how this appraisal affected their subsequent cognitive emotion regulation strategies. Three hundred and twenty‐four participants were instructed to recall the most stressful situation in the last month, and to rate how they cognitively appraised the situation (threat, centrality, controllability, commitment, injustice/unfairness, expectedness, expectancy) and how they cognitively regulated their emotion (self‐blame, blaming others, acceptance, refocus on planning, positive refocusing, rumination, positive reappraisal, putting into perspective, catastrophizing). Multiple regression analysis revealed that even after control for other variables, such as age, sex, personality, the time when the situation occurred and the intensity of negative emotion, all criteria of cognitive appraisal except for expectedness predicted cognitive emotion regulation choice. Implications and limitations of this research are discussed.

  November 11, 2015   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12098   open full text
• You were always on my mind: The importance of “significant others” in the attenuation of retrieval‐induced forgetting in Japan.
  Yukiko Uchida, Taiji Ueno, Yuri Miyamoto.
  Japanese Psychological Research. April 21, 2014
  Research on memory has demonstrated that remembering material can cause forgetting of related information, which is known as retrieval‐induced forgetting (RIF). Macrae and Roseveare identified “self” as one of the boundary conditions of this effect in the Western cultural context, showing that RIF was eliminated when material was encoded to be related to the self (known as self‐referential effect), but not to significant others. In this study, we predicted and found that significant others could be another boundary condition in Japanese cultural contexts in which self and agency are more interdependent or conjoint; RIF was observed neither under best‐friend‐related encoding nor under family‐related encoding in Japan. The effect of significant others is found uniquely in Japanese cultural contexts, suggesting that the cultural model of self has significant power in the spontaneous system of memory.

  April 21, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12051   open full text
• Effects of punctuation on the processing of temporarily ambiguous sentences in Japanese.
  Keiyu Niikuni, Toshiaki Muramoto.
  Japanese Psychological Research. April 21, 2014
  This study explored the effects of comma insertion on the processing of garden path sentences in Japanese. In two experiments, participants read relative clause sentences containing two ambiguities: single versus relative clause and early‐opening (EO) versus late‐opening (LO) left clause boundaries. EO sentences were presented with or without a comma compatible with an EO boundary in Experiment 1 and, in Experiment 2, with an LO boundary. The results showed that the comma, whether compatible or incompatible with the correct clause boundary, decreased reading time for the relative clause's head noun, indicating that a comma helps readers avoid or recover from garden paths caused by relative clause structures. Conversely, a comma incompatible with a clause boundary increased processing costs of second ambiguity resolution (EO vs. LO). We concluded that punctuation affects processing of temporary ambiguity in Japanese as in languages with stricter punctuation rules; furthermore, readers depend strongly on punctuation for online processing of whole sentence structures. We also discuss the relationship between punctuation and (implicit) prosody.

  April 21, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12052   open full text
• Shedding light on painters' implicit knowledge: The effect of lighting on recognizing expression and facial impressions of a depicted person in portraits.
  Yuiko Sakuta, So Kanazawa, Masami K. Yamaguchi.
  Japanese Psychological Research. April 21, 2014
  We aimed to verify painters' empirical rules in painting portraits from the perspective of face perception. In particular, we examined the effects of lighting on perceiving impressions and facial expressions of a depicted person by using portrait paintings with various lighting conditions of contrast (high, low) and position (left, right). Viewers rated their impressions of the people in the portraits and those people's expressions using 7‐point scales. Impressions regarding likability or attractiveness were stable regardless of the lighting conditions, while the other impressions differed among the lighting conditions. Positive emotions were perceived more strongly in paintings with low contrast, whereas negative emotions were perceived more strongly in paintings with high contrast. Overall, these results suggest that lighting has a systematic effect on face perception even in portrait paintings. We propose that the current study provides empirical evidence of painters' implicit knowledge.

  April 21, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12053   open full text
• Processing segmental and prosodic information in spoken word planning: Further evidence from Cantonese Chinese.
  Andus Wing‐Kuen Wong, Hsuan‐Chih Chen.
  Japanese Psychological Research. April 21, 2014
  Three picture‐word interference experiments were conducted to investigate how segmental and tonal information is processed in Cantonese spoken word planning. The picture names were all Cantonese monosyllables with a consonant‐vowel‐consonant structure. Significant facilitation effects on naming latencies were found when the target (e.g., 星 /sing1/, “Star”) and the auditory word distractor (e.g., /ging2/, /sik6/, or /soeng3/) shared two identical phonemic segments (regardless of the segments' syllable‐internal position), than when they were unrelated, whereas no reliable effects were obtained when they shared only the vowel (e.g., /dim3/), the coda (e.g., /hung2/), or together with the tone (e.g., /bit1/ or /fung1/). Furthermore, the facilitation effect observed in the consonant + consonant + tone‐related condition (e.g., /soeng1/) was reliably larger than that in the consonant + consonant‐related condition (e.g., /soeng3/). These results suggest that activation of a single segment is not effective in influencing Cantonese word production and that the lexical tone in Cantonese has a unique role to play. A model which assumes interactivity between lexical and sublexical (including tonal and segmental representations) levels of processing in Cantonese spoken word planning can best account for the available results.

  April 21, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12054   open full text
• A sixth personality domain that is independent of the Big Five domains: The psychometric properties of the HEXACO Personality Inventory in a Japanese sample.
  Akio Wakabayashi.
  Japanese Psychological Research. February 25, 2014
  We investigated the reliability of the HEXACO‐Personality Inventory (HEXACO‐PI) using the NEO Five‐Factor Inventory (NEO‐FFI) and the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) Big Five scales in a Japanese sample of 492 respondents (mean age = 20.4 years). The psychometric properties of the HEXACO‐PI were examined and found to be satisfactory. The results of the factor analysis showed that the six hypothesized personality domains were found independently. A total of 307 participants responded to the NEO‐FFI and the IPIP Big Five scales. The results showed that the five domains of the HEXACO model corresponded to the Five‐Factor domains and were relative to the Big Five personality domains as a whole, but the sixth domain, Honesty‐Humility, showed weak to moderate correlations with some factors of the NEO‐FFI and the IPIP Big Five scales. These results suggest that the Honesty‐Humility domain is independent of the five fundamental personality factors and that the HEXACO‐PI is a useful and reliable questionnaire for investigating personality structure in cross‐cultural and other context.

  February 25, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12045   open full text
• The relationship between procrastination, delay of gratification, and job satisfaction among high school teachers.
  Falak Zehra Mohsin, Nadia Ayub.
  Japanese Psychological Research. February 25, 2014
  The present study aimed at determining whether a significant relationship exists between procrastination, delay of gratification, and job satisfaction, with work‐related stress as an intervening variable among high school teachers. The sample consisted of 150 high school teachers from Karachi, Pakistan. The analysis showed a negative correlation between procrastination and job satisfaction, and a positive correlation between delay of gratification and job satisfaction. Also, procrastination and delay of gratification were significant predictors of work‐related stress, and work‐related stress was also a significant predictor of job satisfaction. In conclusion, when the teachers are not procrastinating on their job and score high on delay of gratification they will be more satisfied with their job and feel less stressed.

  February 25, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12046   open full text
• Effects of emotional response on the Stroop‐like task in preschool children and young adults.
  Yoshifumi Ikeda, Hideyuki Okuzumi, Mitsuru Kokubun.
  Japanese Psychological Research. February 25, 2014
  This study investigated the effects of emotional response on an inhibitory task, the Stroop‐like day‐night task, in which participants are presented with two pictures. They are then requested to inhibit naming what the card shown to them represents and instead state what the other card represents. Specifically, 35 4‐ to 6‐year‐old children and 15 young adults were administered the emotion‐related happy‐sad task and the emotion‐unrelated up‐down task using the same stimulus set (happy and sad cartoon faces). The results suggested that vulnerability to errors in the happy‐sad task was not derived from increased inhibitory demand. The results also suggested that the happy‐sad task is more inhibitory‐demanding in terms of response time. These results suggested that the happy‐sad task elicits interference more than other variants of this task, not because the task involves emotional stimuli per se but because the task involves both emotional stimuli and emotional responses.

  February 25, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12047   open full text
• Latent variable models for analyzing children's processing ability.
  Yanchun Xing, Wenqing Ma, Ningzhong Shi, Yuan Wang.
  Japanese Psychological Research. February 25, 2014
  In this paper, we develop a latent processing ability model to analyze the speed of processing ability data. Our approach can not only effectively evaluate the effects of covariates on the latent processing ability, but also estimate the latent trait of each child by calculating its posterior mean. In addition, we derive the correlations structure of latent traits among different age groups. Simulations are conducted to evaluate the performance of our proposed model. The results indicated that the estimation of model parameters is satisfactory overall. The method is evaluated using real data from children aged 4–7 years in Changchun, China.

  February 25, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12048   open full text
• “Granny dumping”: Acceptability of sacrificing the elderly in a simulated moral dilemma.
  Nobuyuki Kawai, Kenta Kubo, Namiko Kubo‐Kawai.
  Japanese Psychological Research. February 25, 2014
  In a simulated moral dilemma, most people would be willing to endorse killing a single individual to save five others, but do people show the same degree of resistance to sacrificing people of different ages? In the present study, participants were asked to choose how acceptable it was to sacrifice one individual from a number of different age groups in order to save five others in a trolley problem. The sacrificial targets were a 70‐year‐old male stranger, a 20‐year‐old male stranger, a 5‐year‐old male stranger, or a 20‐year‐old male disabled stranger. Our results indicated that more participants accepted sacrificing the elderly stranger than the other three targets; sacrificing the child was the least accepted option. These results indicate that the decision‐making process in a moral dilemma involves weighing others' lives according to their age and implicitly predicting their life span.

  February 25, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12049   open full text
• Examining the factor structure of the Psychological Mindedness Scale in the Japanese population through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses.
  Yukihiro Takagishi, Masayo Uji, Keiichiro Adachi.
  Japanese Psychological Research. January 17, 2014
  Psychological mindedness (PM) is a psychological construct that represents the tendency and ability to understand the relationships between thoughts, feelings, and behavior. This study examined the statistical properties, particularly the factor structure, of the Psychological Mindedness Scale (PMS) in a non‐clinical Japanese sample through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. The relationship between PMS and depression was also examined for predictive validity. The results suggested that the PMS tested on a Japanese sample contains the following four factors: (a) belief in the benefits of discussing one's problems; (b) access to feelings; (c) openness to new ideas and capacity to change; and (d) interest in the meaning and motivation of own and others' behavior. Whereas the total PM score and Factors 2 and 3 had negative correlations with depression, there was a positive correlation between Factor 4 and depression. The 4‐factor structure of the scale is deemed to be applicable to the Japanese population.

  January 17, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12042   open full text
• Developmental trajectory in the relationship between calculation skill and finger dexterity: A longitudinal study.
  Atsushi Asakawa, Shinichiro Sugimura.
  Japanese Psychological Research. January 17, 2014
  A 2‐year longitudinal study of 33 children aged 4–6 years was conducted to clarify the developmental relationship between calculation skill and finger dexterity, as well as the selectivity of the predictive power of finger dexterity on later calculation skill. We examined individual developmental change in the relationship between addition performance and finger dexterity and observed whether children fit a linear developmental pattern. Multiple regression analysis showed that participants' performance on addition tests was strongly predicted by their finger dexterity. However, their performance on vocabulary tests was not strongly influenced by finger dexterity. These findings suggest that calculation skill in children aged 4–6 years is strongly related to finger dexterity.

  January 17, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12041   open full text
• The mark of adaptive memory in healthy and cognitively impaired older adults and elderly.
  Josefa N. S. Pandeirada, Maria Salomé Pinho, Ana Lúcia Faria.
  Japanese Psychological Research. January 17, 2014
  The survival processing paradigm has recently drawn attention to the functional aspects of memory functioning. The survival effect, characterized by better memory performance when information is processed in a survival context, as compared with a variety of controls, is now well established in healthy populations. The main goal of this study was to test this paradigm in a group of cognitively impaired older adults and elderly; their data were compared to the data obtained in a group of healthy older adults and elderly. Seventeen cognitively impaired and 17 healthy participants performed a typical survival task using a blocked within‐subject design procedure and free recall as the memory test. The healthy older adults and elderly performed better on this memory task as well as on other tests included in a neuropsychological evaluation protocol. Importantly, both groups benefited from survival processing. These results provide further support for the power of survival processing, extending this phenomenon to cognitively impaired aging participants. The data also suggest that the survival effect is not simply a form of deep processing. Potential applied considerations are presented.

  January 17, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12040   open full text
• Intermanual differences on neuropsychological motor tasks in a Japanese university student sample.
  Hikari Yamashita.
  Japanese Psychological Research. January 17, 2014
  We explored the intermanual difference scores of 128 Japanese university students for five typical neuropsychological motor tasks (grip strength, finger tapping, two versions of the grooved pegboard, and the dot‐filling test) and examined the relation between hand preference and intermanual difference in motor proficiency. Using the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory, 18 and 110 participants were identified as left‐ and right‐handed, respectively. Although the right hand performed better than the left for right‐handed participants, and vice versa, in all five tasks, the degree of intermanual difference varied between tasks. A discriminant function analysis using the laterality quotients of the five motor tasks as independent variables indicated that hand preference was predictable from the task performances with an accuracy of 90% or more. The dot‐filling test and finger tapping had stronger canonical loadings than the other tasks.

  January 17, 2014   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12039   open full text
• Revisiting Chinese‐speaking children's understanding of argument structure.
  Lu Jiang, Etsuko Haryu.
  Japanese Psychological Research. October 28, 2013
  A causative verb is likely to appear in a sentence with two noun arguments, whereas a noncausative verb tends to appear in a sentence with a single argument. The present research investigates from what point children learning Chinese begin to show this knowledge of argument structure. Two‐, 3‐, 4‐, and 5‐year‐old children were tested using a forced‐choice pointing task. The results showed that Chinese‐speaking children aged 2 years could associate a transitive construction with a causative event, whereas they were not able to map an intransitive construction to a noncausative event even after reaching 5 years of age. The reason why Chinese children have such difficulty in learning knowledge of intransitive construction is discussed, focusing on (a) the semantic properties of certain intransitive verbs, which have been found not only in Chinese but also in other languages, and (b) the ellipsis of arguments, which is characteristic of Chinese.

  October 28, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12036   open full text
• Number processing of Arabic and Hebrew bilinguals: Evidence supporting the distance effect.
  Deia Ganayim, Raphiq Ibrahim.
  Japanese Psychological Research. October 28, 2013
  In the current study, a direct assessment of the effect of language lexical‐syntactic structure and magnitude semantic access on numerical processing was made by contrasting the performance of Arabic/Hebrew bilinguals in a digital (Hindi‐digits/Arabic‐digits) and verbal numerical comparison task (Arabic, an inverted language: Units‐Decades, Hebrew, a non‐inverted language: Decades‐Units). Our data revealed in the digital presentation format (Experiment 1) a regular distance effect in Arabic language‐Hindi digits and Hebrew language‐Arabic digits, characterized by an inverse relation between reaction times and numerical distance with no difference in the mean reaction times of participants in Arabic‐L1 and Hebrew‐L2. This indicates that both lexical digits of two‐digit numbers in L1 and L2 are similarly processed and semantically accessed. However in the verbal presentation format (Experiment 2) a similar pattern of distance effect was found, but the mean reaction times in Arabic were lower than in Hebrew in each numerical distance. This indicates that the processing of two‐digit number words in L1 and L2 is semantically accessed and determined by the syntactic structure of each language.

  October 28, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12035   open full text
• Priming effects under continuous flash suppression: An examination on subliminal bottom‐up processing.
  Kaede Kido, Shogo Makioka.
  Japanese Psychological Research. October 28, 2013
  Binocular rivalry is a bistable perception that occurs when two dissimilar stimuli are presented to each eye. Recent studies have demonstrated that the reaction time to target words under binocular rivalry was shortened when semantically related prime words were presented supraliminally (Costello, Jiang, Baartman, McGlennen, & He, 2009). We investigated whether three types of priming (repetition, semantic, and cross‐script) occurred from the prime words presented under binocular rivalry, by using continuous flash suppression paradigm (Tsuchiya, Koch, Gilroy, & Blake, 2006). The prime words presented to the suppressed eye invoked repetition and cross‐script priming, but not semantic priming. The results suggested that the stimuli presented to the suppressed eye underwent shape and phonological level processing, but not semantic level processing.

  October 28, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12034   open full text
• Does spirituality really matter?: A study on the potential of spirituality for older adult's adjustment to aging.
  Sofia Humboldt, Isabel Leal, Filipa Pimenta.
  Japanese Psychological Research. October 28, 2013
  This study intended to analyze the indicators of adjustment to aging (AtA) and to investigate the latent constructs that can work as major determinants in spirituality for a cross‐national older community‐dwelling population. Questionnaires were completed to assess the participants' background information. Interviews were performed, addressing one core area: indicators of AtA. Complete data were available for 154 older adults from two nationalities (German and Portuguese), aged between 75 and 103 years (M = 86.6; SD = 6.98). The data were subjected to content analysis. Representations of the associations and latent constructs were analyzed using a multiple correspondence analysis (MCA). The most prevalent response of the interviewed participants for indicators of AtA was spirituality (43.2%). Spiritual activities was the most reported response regarding spirituality (20.0%). A significant moderate association was found between spiritual activities and nationality (V = .365; p < .001). Spirituality for older adults was explained by a three‐dimensional overall model: spiritual and existential meaning, limit‐related awareness and community embeddedness. The findings presented in this paper emphasized the need to explore the potential of spirituality for AtA and the need for improving the spiritual dimension of health care for the older cross‐national population.

  October 28, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12033   open full text
• Emergence of response‐response relations.
  Masanobu Kuwahara, Akio Matsumoto, Hiroto Okouchi, Koichi Ono.
  Japanese Psychological Research. August 29, 2013
  The present study examined whether bidirectional response‐response relations could be established without direct reinforcement. In AB training for 12 undergraduates, higher rates of touches to a white circle on the monitor screen (A1) produced two stimuli (B1 and B2) on half of the trials, whereas lower rates (A2) produced the same effect on the other half. Choosing one of the two stimuli was reinforced according to the preceding responding (A1B1 and A2B2). In BC training, touching a stimulus (B1 or B2) produced three white circles lined up horizontally on the screen, after which one of two different response sequences to the circles (left‐center‐right, C1 or C2, and right‐center‐left, C2 or C1) were reinforced, depending on the stimulus presented (B1C1 and B2C2). After AB and BC relations were established, 11 of 12 participants showed the emergence of untrained relations (BA, CB, AC, and CA) throughout five test sessions, and the remaining participant showed it in the first four test sessions. These response‐response relations were replicated with five other undergraduates and different trained relations.

  August 29, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12031   open full text
• Infants’ recognition of subtle anger facial expression.
  Hiroko Ichikawa, Masami K. Yamaguchi.
  Japanese Psychological Research. June 10, 2013
  Infants’ recognition of facial expressions develops during postnatal life. Previous studies have showed that infants learned to discriminate the facial expression of basic emotions such as happy or angry expressions by approximately 7 months of age. Although infants’ recognition of intense expressions has been demonstrated, their recognition of subtle expressions is unclear. The present study examined whether 6‐ to 7‐month‐old infants recognize the subtle anger expression. We presented the subtle expressions either as static or as dynamic displays. In static presentations, infants recognized the subtle anger expression. This result suggests that the infants have high sensitivity to angry expressions which signal a dangerous situation. In dynamic presentations, infants did not recognize the subtle anger expression. Infants around this age rarely see the dynamic anger expression in their daily lives. Their limited experience with dynamic expressions of anger might make it hard to recognize a dynamic subtle expression. Infants could learn to utilize facial motions in the development of recognition of facial expressions.

  June 10, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12025   open full text
• Effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy on the signs, symptoms and clinical consequences of premature ejaculation.
  Seyyed Davoud Mohammadi, Parvaneh Mohammadkhani, Behruz Dolatshahi, Asghar Dadkhah.
  Japanese Psychological Research. June 05, 2013
  The purpose of this research was to assess the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) on the signs, symptoms, and clinical‐sexual consequences of premature ejaculation, including sexual esteem, sexual anxiety, sexual depression, sexual fear, and sexual satisfaction of patients and their wives. Fifteen patients with premature ejaculation were selected and received cognitive behavioral therapy of eight to 12 sessions. Finally, the data collected from 12 patients were analyzed using paired t‐tests. The results of the analysis showed that all of the variables changed after the treatment. All of the changes were statistically significant with a tendency towards improvement. CBT can be a more popular and effective treatment provided to patients suffering from premature ejaculation.

  June 05, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12020   open full text
• Development of the Two‐Dimensional Mood Scale for self‐monitoring and self‐regulation of momentary mood states.
  Yosuke Sakairi, Kentaro Nakatsuka, Takeshi Shimizu.
  Japanese Psychological Research. June 05, 2013
  The purpose of this study was to develop a measure for self‐monitoring and self‐regulation of momentary mood states. The Two‐Dimensional Mood Scale (TDMS), consisting of eight words selected on the basis of pleasure and arousal, was created as an efficient measure of self‐monitoring. In Study 1, the validity and reliability of the TDMS were examined by administering the measure to 904 university students. Structural equation modeling revealed that mood states were constructed of two components, arousal and pleasure, and factor analysis found two factors, vitality and stability. In Study 2, differences between two mood manipulations, activation (exercise) and relaxation techniques were examined in 224 university students. The results showed that exercise induced higher vitality ( η P 2 = .62 , η G 2 = .28 ) but no change in stability ( η p 2 < .01 , η G 2 < .01 ), while relaxation resulted in an increase in stability ( η p 2 = .43 , η G 2 = .11 ) but no change in vitality ( η P 2 = .04 , η G 2 = .01 ). The TDMS can be combined with various mood manipulations to enable individuals to self‐regulate and alter negative psychological states.

  June 05, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12021   open full text
• Perception of one's own and others' ability by preschool Japanese children.
  Daisuke Watanabe, Masamichi Yuzawa.
  Japanese Psychological Research. June 05, 2013
  This study examined the perception of one's own and others' ability in preschool Japanese boys and girls. In Study 1, 70 Japanese boys and girls aged 4–6 years rated their own and their close friend's ability on their favorite outdoor and indoor activities. In Study 2, 65 Japanese children aged 5 and 6 years rated their own and their close friend's ability and guessed that of a nonfriend (a mere acquaintance child in the preschool) on their most and least favorite outdoor and indoor activities. The major findings were as follows: (a) the perception of preschool children's own ability correlates with that of their close friend's ability; (b) ability perception was influenced by preference for the activity and by gender; and (c) no difference was found between ratings for a close friend and a nonfriend according to activities preferences, which differed from the ability perception by preadolescent children.

  June 05, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12022   open full text
• Block‐wise conflict adaptation of visual selectivity: Role of hemisphere‐dependent and location‐specific mechanisms.
  Kei Kuratomi, Kazuhito Yoshizaki.
  Japanese Psychological Research. May 05, 2013
  Three experiments investigated views on modulation of visual selectivity that involve hemisphere‐dependence and conflict frequency based views for a whole display. In each experiment, 16 participants completed a flanker task with compatible/incompatible stimulus arrays presented in the left, center, or right visual fields. The relative frequency of the compatible stimulus‐arrays within a trial block was varied as a function of the visual field. In Experiment 1, the relative compatibility frequency in the lateral visual fields was varied (75% / 25%) but not in the center visual field (50%). The results showed that in the lateral visual fields, the performance between the compatible and incompatible trials differed more in conditions with few (vs. many) compatibility trials. Experiments 2 and 3 validated these findings. In Experiment 2, the compatibility frequency varied in the center visual field but not in the lateral fields, resulting in performance effects in all three visual fields. Experiment 3 varied the magnitude of the differences between the compatibility and incompatibility frequencies. Together, the findings showed that participants adjusted to the frequencies of compatible stimuli in all visual fields, indicating conflict adaptation that depends on the relative frequencies of compatible stimuli. The results also suggest that this adaptation is associated with hemisphere‐dependent and location‐specific mechanisms.

  May 05, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12015   open full text
• The effects of schema on recognition memories and subjective experiences for actions and objects.
  Ryoma Yamada, Yukio Itsukushima.
  Japanese Psychological Research. May 05, 2013
  We examined how the schema affects recognition memories and subjective experiences for actions and objects. First, participants watched consecutive slides that described a man in the kitchen. In the slides, the man performed schema‐consistent actions and schema‐inconsistent actions, and schema‐consistent objects and schema‐inconsistent objects were left in the kitchen space. After watching the slides, participants completed a recognition test, a remember/know test, and a Perception/Thought/Emotion/Context questionnaire. For objects, the discrimination between targets and distracters was more accurate for schema‐inconsistent items than for schema‐consistent items, owing to perceptual, thought, and emotional recollections for schema‐inconsistent object targets. For actions, schema‐consistent targets were more frequently recognized than schema‐inconsistent targets, with more remember judgments based on perceptual and contextual recollections. While item‐specific information of schema‐inconsistent targets could be elaborated for objects, the perceptual details and the contextual relationship of schema‐consistent targets could be elaborated for actions. We also found less false recognitions for schema‐consistent action distracters than for schema‐consistent object distracters. The retrieval of the perceptual details of schema‐consistent action targets could prevent false recognitions for schema‐consistent action distracters.

  May 05, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12016   open full text
• Physical and cognitive effort discounting of hypothetical monetary rewards.
  Paweł Ostaszewski, Przemysław Bąbel, Bartłomiej Swebodziński.
  Japanese Psychological Research. May 05, 2013
  Effort discounting refers to the decrease in the subjective value of a reward as the effort required to obtain the reward increases. The main aims of this study were to ascertain whether the amount of the reward affects the steepness of the effort discounting process for hypothetical monetary rewards, to identify whether this steepness depends on the type of effort that is required, and to determine whether the steepness of different types of effort covary at the individual level. Two types of effort were studied under hypothetical choice situations: physical effort and cognitive effort. Both physical and cognitive effort discounting were well described by the hyperbolic model. Large rewards were discounted less steeply than small rewards for both types of effort. This finding agrees with the results of prior studies which have found that larger rewards have greater motivational power. In addition, the steepness of physical effort discounting was positively correlated with the steepness of cognitive effort discounting, which suggests that the effort discounting process is a trait‐like characteristic within an individual.

  May 05, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12019   open full text
• Age‐related differences in prefrontal, parietal, and hippocampal activations during correct rejections of faces.
  Takashi Tsukiura, Yayoi Shigemune, Rui Nouchi, Toshimune Kambara, Ryuta Kawashima.
  Japanese Psychological Research. May 05, 2013
  Older adults are more likely than young adults to show age‐related increases in remembering events that never occurred. However, little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying the increased occurrence of false alarms in older adults. To investigate this issue, this fMRI study examined age‐related differences in correct rejection activations during the retrieval of memory for faces. In behavioral data, older adults showed a higher rate of false alarms than young adults in subjective recollection responses. From fMRI data, an age‐related decrease in brain activations during correct rejections was identified in the inferior frontal gyrus, supramarginal gyrus, and hippocampus. In addition, interaction between activations in the inferior frontal and supramarginal regions during correct rejections was significantly lower in older adults than in young adults. These findings suggest that an age‐related decline in interaction between the ventral prefrontal region, which is involved in the source monitoring process during retrieval, and the inferior parietal region, which is associated with recollection by cooperating with the hippocampus, could induce impaired differentiation between old and novel stimuli in older adults.

  May 05, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12017   open full text
• Parent‐offspring conflict in Japan and parental influence across six cultures.
  Shelli L. Dubbs, Abraham P. Buunk, Hirokazu Taniguchi.
  Japanese Psychological Research. February 25, 2013
  Previous research has demonstrated that parents and children often have conflicting mate preferences. The present research was conducted among 443 Japanese university students. Using an existing scale designed to uncover parent‐offspring conflict over mate choice, the results revealed that children perceived having a potential partner with traits connoting poor genetic quality as being more unacceptable to themselves, and having a potential partner with traits connoting low parental investment and cooperation with the ingroup as being more unacceptable to their parent. A number of sex differences emerged. The highest potential for parent‐offspring conflict existed between female offspring and their father, and female offspring also rated traits connoting low social status as being more unacceptable to their parents, particularly to the father.

  February 25, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12003   open full text
• Differential outcomes of skill training, group counseling, and individual cognitive therapy for persons with acquired visual impairment.
  Yukihiko Ueda, Akira Tsuda.
  Japanese Psychological Research. February 25, 2013
  As part of the Living Skills Training Program, group counseling and individual cognitive therapy were implemented to decrease psychological distress for adults with acquired visual impairment. This quasi‐experimental design study compared the outcomes of a 6‐month skill training program combined with a group counseling program (n = 37), with (n = 9) or without (n = 10) individual cognitive therapy, and with a control group (n = 42). The outcome measures were the Profile of Mood States and the Nottingham Adjustment Scale Japanese Version. The results showed that participants with low psychological distress decreased anxiety and increased acceptance of disability, even when they did not participate in group counseling. However, among the participants with high distress, they did not show any improvement without group counseling or individual therapy. The participants with high distress who engaged in group counseling showed an improving trend in attitudes toward others. Moreover, the participants who chose to engage in individual therapy in addition to group counseling showed decreased tension‐anxiety, depression, and fatigue, and significantly improved acceptance of disability. These results suggest that group counseling, combined with individual cognitive therapy, can be an effective part of rehabilitation treatment for clients who have high psychological distress.

  February 25, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12010   open full text
• Reasoning bias for the recall of one's own beliefs in a Smarties task for adults.
  Yukio Maehara, Satoshi Umeda.
  Japanese Psychological Research. February 21, 2013
  While many studies in the theory of mind (ToM) literature have investigated how we understand others' mental states, few have explored the mechanism by which we reflect on our own mental states. This study examined how adults reflect on their own and others' mental states within the same ToM task. To do so, we modified the Smarties task, one of the traditional ToM tasks for children. The results showed that adult participants were biased by outcome knowledge when recalling their false belief and that the participants who overestimated their false belief also overestimated the mental states of a naive other. These results were analogous to young children's failure in the Smarties task. Considering the current findings, we discuss possible cognitive processes that are common across children and adults when reflecting on their own mental states and the mental states of others.

  February 21, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12009   open full text
• The recognized benefits of negative thinking/affect in depression and anxiety: Developing a scale.
  Jun Sasaki, Shinji Sakamoto, Aiko Moriwaki, Kai Inoue, Kenkichi Ugajin.
  Japanese Psychological Research. February 21, 2013
  Negative thinking/affect (NTA) in depression and anxiety is an important target of clinical intervention. However, individuals recognize the benefit of NTA. There is a need to develop a scale for empirical studies of NTA. Two‐hundred and fifty‐nine Japanese university students were assigned to answer: (a) the state in the past week (positive affect (PA) and Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale), (b) the current state (PA and State‐Trait Anxiety Inventory‐State (STAI‐S)), and (c) the usual state (PA and STAI‐Trait), after completing the Recognized Benefit of NTA Scale (RBNTA). Another 291 students completed the Rosenberg Self‐Esteem Scale and the Revised Life Orientation Test, after completing the RBNTA. Two weeks later, 76 participants completed the RBNTA. The RBNTA with nine subscales was developed after comparing the indices of fitness from 14 different factor solutions. The internal and test‐retest reliability and content validity were confirmed. Correlation analyses revealed that the recognition of trying to obtain benefits/avoid costs tends to associate with positive/negative affect and that most of such recognitions did not associate with self‐esteem and optimism.

  February 21, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12008   open full text
• Effects of nonuniform lighting on the evaluation of spaces: A comparison between the situations with and without conversation.
  Natsuki Barazawa, Kazunori Hanyu.
  Japanese Psychological Research. February 19, 2013
  The prospect‐refuge theory is a theory of landscape aesthetics and has recently been applied to interior design. The purposes of this article were to apply the prospect‐refuge theory to the interior lighting environment and to examine the effects of nonuniform lighting on the evaluations of a room shared with another person. Two experiments were conducted: Experiment 1 focused on the situation without conversation, and Experiment 2 on the situation with conversation. The results showed that nonuniform lighting influences the features of prospect and refuge in rooms. The results also showed that the features of prospect and refuge are important when the space is shared with people having no interaction. However, when people have an interaction, a sense of unity, which is formed by illumination wrapping them together, is important to make an adequate environment.

  February 19, 2013   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12011   open full text
• Refining the two‐parameter testlet response model by introducing testlet discrimination parameters.
  Jian Tao, Bao Xu, Ning‐Zhong Shi, Hong Jiao.
  Japanese Psychological Research. December 13, 2012
  For testlet response data, traditional item response theory (IRT) models are often not appropriate due to local dependence presented among items within a common testlet. Several testlet‐based IRT models have been developed to model examinees' responses. In this paper, a new two‐parameter normal ogive testlet response theory (2PNOTRT) model for dichotomous items is proposed by introducing testlet discrimination parameters. A Bayesian model parameter estimation approach via a data augmentation scheme is developed. Simulations are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed 2PNOTRT model. The results indicated that the estimation of item parameters is satisfactory overall from the viewpoint of convergence. Finally, the proposed 2PNOTRT model is applied to a set of real testlet data.

  December 13, 2012   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12002   open full text
• Gaze cueing as a function of perceived gaze direction.
  Qian Qian, Miao Song, Keizo Shinomori.
  Japanese Psychological Research. December 13, 2012
  Previous studies have found that attention is automatically oriented in the direction of other people's gaze. This study directly investigated whether the perceiving gaze direction modulates the orienting of observers' attention. Gaze perception was manipulated by changing the face context (head orientation) of the gaze cue: the perceived gaze angle was increased (or decreased) when the head and gaze are congruent (or incongruent), while the local‐feature information of the eye region was preserved for all stimuli. The results showed that gaze‐cueing effects were enhanced when the perceived gaze direction was averted more toward left or right, and reduced when the perceived gaze direction was closer to direct gaze. The results suggest that gaze‐cueing effects are based on mechanisms specialized for gaze perception, and the magnitude of gaze‐cueing effects was probably a function of the perceived gaze direction.

  December 13, 2012   doi: 10.1111/jpr.12001   open full text
• Repetition advantage and disadvantage in perceptual identification tasks.
  Toshinori Kuwana.
  Japanese Psychological Research. November 27, 2012
  Repetitive presentation of a stimulus brings not only advantage but also disadvantage when performing perceptual identification tasks. In this study, the conflicting phenomena of the effect of repetition were examined using two Kana character sets (Hiragana and Katakana) as stimuli. Two identical or different stimuli were presented in rapid succession and participants were asked to identify and report them. The stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between the two stimuli was varied from 200 ms to 1200 ms, according to which the suitable temporal conditions for the two distinct effects of repetition were explored. The results indicated that two distinct effects of repetition occurred depending on the informational code shared by the two stimuli. An interference effect of repetition was observed with SOA values of up to 500 ms when the two stimuli were identical in terms of their visual pattern code (Hiragana), whereas a superior effect of repetition was observed with an SOA value of 200 ms when they were identical only in terms of their phonological code (Hiragana and Katakana). From these findings, the author proposes that when two identical stimuli are presented in rapid succession, inhibition and activation mechanisms may function at different levels of processing.

  November 27, 2012   doi: 10.1111/j.1468-5884.2012.00542.x   open full text
• Two‐ to three‐month‐old infants prefer moving face patterns to moving top‐heavy patterns.
  Hiroko Ichikawa, Aki Tsuruhara, So Kanazawa, Masami K. Yamaguchi.
  Japanese Psychological Research. October 10, 2012
  Newborn infants prefer face‐like patterns over non‐face‐like patterns. This preference is explained by newborns' preference for a “top‐heavy” configuration, that is, for geometric patterns that have more elements in the upper part than in the lower part of the configuration (Simion, Valenza, Macchi Cassia, Turati, & Umiltà, 2002). However, for 3‐month‐old infants, face preference cannot be explained only by a preference for “top‐heaviness” because they prefer veridical face images over top‐heavy images. The present study used geometric patterns to investigate whether 2‐ to 3‐month‐old infants' preference for face patterns exceeds their preference for top‐heavy configurations. In Experiment 1, we revealed that the infants preferred the face pattern to the top‐heavy pattern only when the internal elements of the patterns were presented with face‐like movements. This facilitative effect of internal movement was observed again in Experiment 2, in which the patterns were presented with non‐face‐like movements. These results suggest that 2‐ to 3‐month‐olds' preference for geometric face patterns is greater than their preference for top‐heavy patterns only when aided by the movement of internal elements.

  October 10, 2012   doi: 10.1111/j.1468-5884.2012.00540.x   open full text