Session Detail

Diagrammatic representations carry meaning at multiple levels. While individual elements of a diagram carry meanings in specific ways, groups of these elements can comprise perceptual patterns that carry higher-order meaning. For example, while individual bars in a bar chart may express the prices of a metal in individual months, consecutive bars that make up the shape of a downward staircase as a group, express a general downward trend of the price (Pinker 1990). Extensive studies have been conducted on the psychological mechanism for the comprehension of such higher-order information expressed in a diagrams (E.g., Ratwani et al. 2008, Gattis and Holyoak 1996). As psychological studies, however, they do not focus on the very phenomenon of higher-order meaning in diagrams. Why does a particular perceptual pattern in a diagram carry a particular meaning rather than other meanings? This question is distinct from the question of what particular meaning people actually read off the given perceptual pattern. In this presentation, we will show that addressing this fundamental question from the perspective of logic can illuminate the psychological mechanisms for global reading. Using our approach, the meaning relation that supports a higher-order meaning is seen to be a logical consequence of more basic meanings relations that support low-order meanings. Syntactic rules on the choice and arrangements of diagrammatic elements make an important link in this chain of logical consequence relation, and this accounts for the fact that diagrams can be designed (1) to generate higher-order meanings, (2) to help the viewer to learn novel conceptual patterns, and even (3) to mislead the viewer to read off non-present higher-order meanings. Thus, our model points to a systematic understanding of how people process higher-order information in diagrams.

 

To examine whether age-related declines in multisensory integration already occur in the middle-aged, we compared the perception of audiovisual simultaneity among healthy young (YA), middle-aged (MA), and older adults (OA) (N=35, 32, and 35, respectively; aged 21-34, 55-64, and 65-80 years, respectively). All subjects underwent an audiovisual simultaneity judgment experiment, in which a visual flash stimulus was presented from a computer monitor and an auditory beep stimulus was presented from two speakers on either side of the monitor. The stimuli were presented at 11 stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs, ±600 ms, ±400 ms, ±300 ms, ±200 ms, ±100 ms, and 0 ms), with 20 trials for each SOA. Positive SOA indicated visual stimuli being presented earlier, and vice versa. Subjects had to judge whether the visual and auditory stimuli were presented simultaneously in each trial. Fitting the data using the model developed by García-Pérez & Alcalá-Quintana (2012), we compared the mean proportion of simultaneous responses across the 11 SOAs, the point of subjective simultaneity (PSS), and the width of the simultaneity window (δ) across the three groups. An Age x SOA interaction effect was found for the proportion of simultaneous responses across the 11 SOA (p< 0.05). The post-hoc tests revealed that compared to young adults, OA presented higher proportions of simultaneous responses at all SOAs (p< 0.05) except at -100 and 0 ms and MA presented higher proportions of simultaneous responses at -200, +200, +300, +400 ms, and +600 (p< 0.05). Both MA and OA groups also presented greater positive PSS and wider δ values than YA (p <0.05), suggesting that they had more asymmetrical audiovisual simultaneity window toward the visual-leading side and had greater uncertainty in determining audiovisual simultaneity. This study shows that declines in the perception of audiovisual simultaneity already exist in the healthy MA. Funding: NSC102-2410-H-002-213-MY2

 

Poorer dual-task gait performance is known as important risk factor for falls in the older population. Here, we investigated whether the perception of audiovisual simultaneity independently contributed to single- and dual-task gait performance in the aging population. Sixty-seven healthy middle-aged and older adults (aged 55-80 years) participated in this study. All participants underwent an audiovisual simultaneity judgment experiment, in which a visual flash stimulus was presented from a computer monitor and an auditory beep stimulus was presented from two speakers on either side of the monitor. The stimuli were presented at 11 stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs, ±600 ms, ±400 ms, ±300 ms, ±200 ms, ±100 ms, and 0 ms), with 20 trials for each SOA. Positive SOA indicated visual stimuli being presented earlier, and vice versa. Subjects had to judge whether the visual and auditory stimuli were presented simultaneously in each trial. Fitting the data using the model developed by García-Pérez & Alcalá-Quintana (2012), we used the width of the simultaneity window (δ) to indicate how well the subjects judged the stimuli simultaneity, with a larger δ indicating poor judgement. All subjects also underwent gait assessment under single-task, motor dual-task (carrying a cup of water while walking), and cognitive dual-task (performing serial-7 subtraction while walking). Regression analyses showed that for motor dual-task and cognitive dual-task gait performance, but not for single-task gait performance, δ independently contributed to double support time variability of gait, after controlling for age, sex, body height, body weight, vision, cognition, and lower extremity strength (adjusted R2 of the entire models= 0.162 and 0.358, respectively, p< 0.05 for both). This is the first study showing that declines in the perception of audiovisual simultaneity independently contribute to dual-task gait variability in the older population.

 

Virtual reality (VR) technology has been studied for entertainment and education, and training methods based on VR technology are being developed in other fields, such as medical care and advertising. The head-mounted display (HMD) has been released to consumers very recently, and it is expected that individuals will use HMDs for various types of VR training. This study explored the possibility of improving creativity using VR technology. Both physical and psychological embodiment of metaphors, which thinking about a problem “on one hand” and then “on the other hand, for creativity promoted convergent thinking and divergent thinking in problem solving (Leung, et al., 2012). We examined whether creative skill improves by “extending one’s field of vision”. Participants engaged in a creative task while they watched scenes with a HMD taken from a viewpoint higher than a normal gaze and then taken at the height of a normal gaze. The results showed that when participants watched the movie taken from a higher viewpoint than usual, creativity measured by the Unusual Uses Test increased, as compared to when they viewed the movie at normal height, suggesting that potential for creativity improved while using VR equipment.

 

The role of adverbs is to add information onto other words (c.f., Hoye, 1997; Simon-Vandenbergen & Aijmer, 2007, Suzuki, 2011). This paper explores the use of adverbials *ly that modify adjectives in the British National Corpus (BNC). Several sets of adverbials were selected – strongly vs. weakly; positively vs. negatively; lightly vs. heavily; and actively vs. passively. Interestingly, it was observed that, many a time, the comparatively positive adverbs (strongly, positively, lightly) modify negative words, and vice versa. This can be observed from the top collocates, for instance, strongly opposed vs. weakly positive, positively dangerous, lightly armed, etc. We also removed the *ly ending and investigated these words when they become adjectives, namely strong/weak; positive/negative; light/heavy; and active/passive. It was discovered that as adjectives themselves, they are mostly modified by adverbs of degree (particularly, relatively, merely, etc.). This study showed how a positive adverb can tone down the negative meaning of the adjective that follows; and how a negative adverb weakens the positive meaning of some adjectives. This observation reminds us how complicated our communication system is – why one bothers to say weakly positive than negative; and positively dangerous than just dangerous. The adverbs serve more than just adding information, it could be ideological or just a token of indirectness. More functions are yet to be discussed. References Hoye, L. F. (1997). Adverbs and modality in English. London: Longman Simon-Vandenbergen, A. and K. Aijmer. (2007). The Semantic Field of Modal Certainty: A Corpus-Based Study of English Adverbs. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Suzuki, D. (2011). A Functional Approach to the Modal Adverbs Certainly, Surely and Definitely , in C. Cummins, C. Elder, T. Godard, M. Macleod, E. Schmidt and G. Walkden (eds.) Proceedings of the Sixth Cambridge Postgraduate Conference in Language Research, 185–194. Cambridge: Cambridge Institute of Language Research.

 

It can be posited that any study of emerging world Englishes is embedded in cognitive linguistics—a move beyond the structural approach to languages to a functional paradigm in explaining their evolution. Today’s globalized necessity is to be able to use English competently, rather than like a “native” speaker, an elusive label given that second and third language speakers of English today far outnumber first language speakers. Moreover, new users of English are reshaping what is considered acceptable English, and they are doing so beyond the reality of different accents and other phonological variations. Systematic lexical, morphological, and syntactic changes are also occurring and being documented as the new users of English construct meaning in this globalized language. This study explores one emerging world English, Taiwan East Asian Standard(izing) English (TEASE) and proposes its veracity within the framework of semantics and lexical pragmatics, two subsets of cognitive linguistics. This framework is particularly useful given that the literature’s guidelines demarcating a specific world English’s features and outright errors are indistinct. Moreover, notwithstanding the embryonic stage of a TEASE glossary, then dictionary and widespread acceptance, this study focuses on the classroom implications of encouraging Taiwanese educators and students to assume ownership of their brand of English, even within Taiwan’s extant test culture. One research question exists: What are emerging in the public domain and in communicative acts that can be considered as stable semantic and pragmatic TEASE features? The methodology is qualitative, using content analysis of ex post facto student and public data. Thus far, five features are identified as distinct in TEASE, though not necessarily exclusive, and are recommended for further study. One classroom implication for Taiwanese students is in motivating them for more effective English learning through exposure to the reality of different world Englishes and TEASE’s place amongst them.

 

This study aims to theoretically predict the production of adjectival expressions by means of application of the Analytic Hierarchy Process, introduces by Saaty (1990, 1994, 2008, etc.), to the semantic structure of (scalar) adjectives. Among the components of adjective meaning are "norm," "objects for comparison," and "background/foreground scales," all of which greatly affect the use of those expressions, or work to decide whether an evaluative judgment is true or not (i.e., P or ¬P). In the linguistic domain, however, it has not been revealed how those elements are interrelated with each other to make such a judgment, and how we can make a theoretical prediction about the judgment based on that. The AHP is seen as an effective tool for dealing with complex decision making, which make it possible to calculate the value of each option. We apply this tool to the theory of adjective expressions in the following manners. First, the decision matrix analysis is introduced to think about how multiple sub-scales can be synthesized into a scale, where “ranks” of the alternatives are computed by multiplying each value of the alternatives by the importance of the criterion. Second, multiple pairwise comparisons are adopted to measure “weights” of background scales and objects for comparison: each of them are compared with one another in the round-robin system (rating 1 to 9), and then calculate a “priority vector.” As a result of those, it gets much easier to predict the generation of adjectives that are quite subjective, variable according to situation, and inconsistent among individuals. For example, the following case can be taken into account; you say “that dog is cute” in the condition where you would think of your pet dog as the most preferential alternative and consider shortness of limbs as the most important sub-scale, etc.

 

Partington, Duguid and Taylor (2013:84), citing Louw (2000) and Morley and Partington (2009), said that end up means that “whenever we have ended up being or doing was not according to the original plan but has gone off programme in some way, and is no longer subject to our cognitive control.” Because of this, end up is often used to refer to “negative outcomes”. This paper collected 499 news articles from Proquest most request news that contained the keyword END UP in all grammatical forms. A total of 570 instances of END UP were collected and among these, END UP IN has 95 instances; END UP BEING has 65; END UP WITH has 62; END UP ON has 34; and END UP AT has 25, all of which constitute about 50% of the total instances of END UP in all the news articles. We then analyzed the connotation of these combinations in the news articles (redundant results were removed manually). These are some examples for analysis. It was found that end up requires analysis at the discourse level because it involves an assumption that is often in conflict with the outcomes. Positive “I'm a little disappointed. This might have been the best shot we had. But it might end up being a blessing in disguise,” said Jim Jess, a Marietta tea party organizer. Negative A Hollywood smile signals success, and the social pressure to have perfect teeth has led to a booming cosmetic dentistry industry. Yet as Otto illustrates in this fascinating book, millions of Americans lack access to basic dental care, and many end up in the emergency room with dental problems. Neutral Because we get to choose who we follow, we may end up with different facts. We can actually create a constant supply of thoughts and statements from others who agree with everything we believe in, further reinforcing our values. in being with on at paying neutral 21 18 21 8 19 4 negative 59 15 16 16 3 9 positive 15 32 11 0 0 0

 

Predictive Processing is promoted by philosophers and neuroscientists as an emerging neural and cognitive architecture (Clark, 2016; Allen and Friston, 2016; Gallagher and Allen, 2016) and was shown to answer the systematicity argument (Kato, 2017). The framework tries to explain cognitive phenomena as emerging from the mechanism of hierarchical prediction error minimization in the brain, and implies the massively context dependent view of cognition in which presumably every part of cognition is influenced by prior knowledge to some extent. This process is shown to be captured as Bayesian inference. Humans do not just recognize patterns or acquire knowledge, but also create an abstract causal model (structure) of it. This structure is employed to make later learning in the domain much faster and easier. This phenomenon, called ‘learning to learn,’ have been modeled via Hierarchical Bayesian Models (HBM) in several learning domains (Griffith et al., 2010; Kemp et al., 2007). HBM use a hierarchical setting of parameters to categorize data and acquire abstract knowledge. We propose that creative aspects of humans seen in human culture including science and arts can also be formalized using this framework. By creative process, we refer to one in that people recognize familiar structures in data and analyze them using abstract knowledge they already have. Creative process specified as above is similar to that of ‘learning to learn,’ but two are slightly different in that ‘creative process’ requires the use of knowledge to not just categorize but to analyze the data and one’s own knowledge. This suggests that underlying computational principle of ‘learning to learn’ and ‘creativity’ is essentially the same. The hierarchical setting is crucial, since ‘learning to learn’ includes meta-cognitive and meta-learning processes, and human culture has been built through cumulative creation processes where novel structures are constructed based on existing cultural structures.

 

There's no one who wants their cognitive skill declined in old age. However, it can't be avoided. Cognitive problems often encountered by elder, this problems such easy to forget, lack quality of sleep, and so on. Cognitive problems will have an impact on almost all aspects in their daily life. Of course, these issues certainly need to be found an intervention. This research method using a systematic review and compared several intervention. Finding the intervention for these problems is necessary to be comprehensively discussed. This study aimed to compare the several interventions that already examined in those researches. Furthermore, we construct an combination preventive intervention that feasible to be applied for primary caregiver among the elder.

 

Keywords: embodiment simulation, iconicity, figure/ground, metaphor, metonymy, translation Translation is a vital activity for many English/Chinese bilingual individuals. However, there is an apparent paucity in the research of cognitive motivations in Chinese/English (C/E) translation, although in the last forty years, cognitive linguistics has grown from its daring nascence to a sophisticated enterprise. The advances are marked by, to list just a very incomplete few: Lakoff and Johnson’s metaphors we live by (1980), Langacker’s cognitive grammar (1987), Talmy’s cognitive semantics (2000), the discovery of mirror neurons at the University of Parma (Iacoboni, 2009), Pinker’s language as a window into human thought (2007), Bergen’s embodied simulation hypothesis (2012), and Barsalou and others’ study of abstract concepts (2013). All these pioneering and monumental explorations have opened up systematic and insightful theoretical perspectives that not only have transformed our understanding of the relationship between language and thought, but also have handed us the torch of enlightening light that can guide our way to re-examine issues in C/E translation. In fact, many motivational issues in C/E translation can be addressed by theories in cognitive linguistics, such as conceptual metaphors and metonyms, iconicity, figure/ground, and embodied simulation. While this presentation qualitatively examines translation evidence of these areas, all the discussion will lead to the argument that the essence of translation is embodied simulation, a theoretical framework that contains the such key points as: • Most likely we understand language by simulating in our minds what it would be like to experience the things that the language describes. • Simulation is the creation of mental experiences of perception and action in the absence of their external manifestation. We use our brains to simulate percepts and actions without actually perceiving or acting (Bergen, 2012). • We understand the mental states of others by simulating them in our brain, and we achieve this effect through mirror neurons (Iacobon, 2009:34). • A mirror neuron is one that is activated when a person performs a certain action or has a certain experience and also when the person observes someone else performing the same action or having the same experience (Coleman, 2009). Through a renewed and detailed analysis of the two contrastive English translations of a well-know Chinese poem天净沙•秋思, it is argued that the embodied simulation principles can persuasively govern the mental operations in translation. On the one hand, a translator derives mental simulation from the source language and culture, and such simulation is conditioned by his linguistic competence in the source language and his overall knowledge of the source culture, both of which are individualized by one's life experiences (cf. Schnelle, 2010: 25-6). On the other hand, the translator represents the simulations he has constructed from the source language into the target language and culture. The representation process and the final products, in turn, are constrained by the translator’s linguistic and cultural competences in the target language and culture. Like language understanding, translation is a complex human engagement that cannot go far without embodied simulation. The observations gained from this research widen the emergent cognitive perspective in translation studies, a new approach that can be well-informed and solidly supported by progresses in cognitive linguistics and neural science. Selected References Bergan, B. (2012). Louder than words: the new science of how the mind makes meaning. New York: Basic Books. Colman, A. M. (2009). A dictionary of psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dancygier, B., & Sweetser, E. (2014). Figurative language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Iacoboni, M. (2009). Mirroring people: The science of empathy and how we connect with others. New York, N.Y: Picador. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Langacker, R. W. (1987). Foundations of cognitive grammar. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press. Pinker, S. (2007). The stuff of thought: Language as a window into human nature. New York: Viking. Talmy, L. (2000). Toward a cognitive semantics: Volume I. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Pinker, S. (2007). The stuff of thought: Language as a window into human nature. New York: Viking. Schnelle, H. (2010). Language in the brain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wilson-Mendenhall C.D., Simmons W.K., Martin A., & Barsalou L.W. (2013) Contextual processing of abstract concepts reveals neural representations of nonlinguistic semantic content. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 25(6 ): 920-35

 

One of the central findings in dialogue research is that interlocutors rapidly converge on referring expressions which become progressively systematized and abstract (Clark, 1996). This occurs for a wide range of referents, e.g. when referring to spatial locations (Garrod and Doherty, 1994), music (Healey, 2002), confidence (Fusaroli et al., 2012), and temporal sequences (Mills, 2011). Cumulatively, these findings suggest that interaction places important constraints on the semantics of referring expressions. However, there is currently no consensus on which interactive mechanisms underpin convergence. The Interactive alignment model of Pickering and Garrod (2004) favours alignment processes, the Grounding model (Clark , 1996) emphasizes the role of positive feedback, while Healey (2002) demonstrates the importance of miscommunication. To investigate in closer detail the development of referential coordination, we report a variant of the “maze task” (Pickering and Garrod, 2004). Participants communicate with each other via an experimental chat tool (Healey and Mills, 2006), which selectively transforms participants' private turn-revisions into public self-repairs that are made visible to the other participant. For example, if a participant, A types: A: "On the top square" and then before sending, revises the turn to: A: "On the top row" The server automatically detects the revision and transforms it into a public self-repair, e.g. A: "On the top square umm I meant row" Participants who received these transformed turns used more abstract and systematized referring expressions, but performed worse at the task. We argue that this is due to two opposite effects: The artificial self-repairs have the beneficial effect of enhancing problem detection and recovery from error by amplifying naturally occurring miscommunication (cf. Healey et al, 2013). On the other hand, once these coordination problems are resolved, the public self-repairs have an opposite, deleterious effect by decreasing participants' confidence in the referring conventions established during the task.

 

The co-presence of bodies in intersubjective situations can give rise to processes of kinesthetic empathy and physiological synchronisation, especially in the contexts of dance: the body and attention of the spectators are oriented towards the dancers. We investigate the processes of “bodymind’s states” contagion between dancers and spectators and its relation to subjective measures of attention. In the Labodanse project we worked closely with the French choreographer Myriam Gourfink who develops a unique movement based on slower breathing of the dancers, generating an extremely slow movement without rhythmic ruptures. Phenomenological studies of her work report changes in temporal perception (TP), and changes in bodily attentional states. In order to quantify this change in TP we had 12 spectators perform two TP protocols (Spontaneous Tempo Production - STP - and Apparent Motion effect - AM - tasks) Before and after a 40-min live performance. We performed a control experiment with a choreography of a distinctly different quality of movement (14 subjects). Subjective reports were collected at the end of the performance. Physiological data was recorded during the performance. Post-performance, we observed a significant slowing down of STP, while AM was reported with longer temporal intervals. Neither of these effects was observed in the control condition. Correlations with subjective reports show a link between paying attention to the breath of the dancer and the change in the perception of AM. Correlations with physiological data are analyzed. The results suggest an expansion of the “specious present” (Wittmann). The absence of similar results in the control condition argues that 1) these effects were due to the specificity of Gourfink’s choreography; 2) changes in TP is a working proxy to study contagion of body-mind states; 3) the role of conscious attention to the breathing of the other enhances intersubjective processes as "body-mind" contagion.

 

Eye-tracking technology is used to infer cognitive processes in many reading studies. Eye movement analyses using garden path sentences have been instrumental in illuminating the online syntactic aspects of the reading process. The purpose of this study is to examine readers’ eye movements during the reading of Thai garden path constructions, and to compare reading patterns between junior and senior Thai readers. Thai writing system is theoretically appealing as it generally has no spaces between words and rarely uses punctuation. Therefore, word segmentation must be based on linguistic cues and, consequently, can be a source of ambiguity for the reader. The experiment described here uses compound nouns to construct garden path sentences based on word segmentation ambiguity. Data from a sample of Thai junior and senior high school students indicate that, despite profound differences between writing systems, the overall impact of sentence level ambiguity is similar to that found for English. The unspaced nature of Thai, however, gives rise to a distinctive pattern of regressive eye movements.

 

With a sentence ‘Tom respects Linda’, Linda is regarded as the cause of the situation because of the implicit causality of interpersonal verb respect. However, with a sentence ‘The teacher respects the student.’ we do not judge the student as the cause of the situation, because respecting someone old seems more natural than respecting some one young. The two examples show that implicit causality of a verb and relationships between people can affect how we make causal attribution. In this research, we tried to investigate how the implicit causality of interpersonal verb (implicit cxausality) and the relation between participants of a situation (social relation) affect the causal attribution in two experiments.. In experiment 1, participants read one sentence like “The teacher respects the student”, and made causal attribution. Causal attribution depends on the causality congruency of the two factors . When causality of the social relation is different from that of the implicit causality (incongruent condition), causal attribution that accords the implicit causality decreased. People also read the verb of a sentence longer in the incongruent condition. However, the implicit causality influence causal judgment more than social context. In experiment 2, participants read two sentences, the sentence used in Exp 1 as the first sentence and second sentence starting with one of the two participants of the first sentence. Participants rated the second sentence having subject consistent on implicit causality more appropriate than the sentence having inconsistent subject. These findings implied that interpersonal verb and social context all have impact on causal judgments, but implicit causality of interpersonal verb have more impacts on causality.

 

Expectations of pain significantly bias the experience of pain in humans and different emotional states potentially influence this cognitive process. However, how pleasant and unpleasant moods affect pain expectations at the behavioral level remains unknown. Here, we aim to clarify if different emotional states bias effects of expectation on pain at behavioral level. In the current study, we manipulated the expectation of participants towards the upcoming painful stimuli and induced different emotional conditions by using the International Affective Picture System. In preliminary results, we found that both painful sensation and effect of expectation on pain were significantly modulated by picture-evoked emotions. Results obtained from this research will enhance our knowledge on how expectation interacts with emotion to shape human responses to pain.

 

Beginners in art appreciation generally have “reality constraints,” in that they show a strong tendency to insist on identifying the depicted object in the artwork with its realistic expression. This tendency was observed in the appreciation of not only representative painting, but also abstract painting. In the case of the appreciation of representative painting, the reality constraints could be relaxed by reading the commentaries about the formal aspect of the paintings. In this study, we examined whether the style of abstract paintings and reading commentaries on them would influence art beginners’ responses to abstract paintings. Twenty-four pairs of college students participated in the experiment. In the first session (learning phase), participants appreciated two representative paintings with the help of any of the following three methods: reading the commentaries on the objects depicted in each painting, reading the commentaries on the formal aspect of the painting, and reading no commentary. In the second session (transfer phase), the participants viewed one of the two abstract paintings that had no commentary. The abstract paintings viewed were Kandinsky‘s “Composition VII,” which had a number of small elements of ambiguous shapes and various colors, and Mondrian’s “Composition with Large Red Plane, Yellow, Black, Gray and Blue,” which was constructed using rectangles of various sizes and colors, and bold black lines. In each session, the participants freely talked to one another while viewing the painting for five minutes. The results revealed that the commentaries were not effective in changing the verbal response to the abstract paintings. On viewing Kandinsky, the participants insisted on interpreting the details as concrete objects like vegetables, animals, etc. On the contrary, in the case of Mondrian, the participants tended to focus more on the formal aspect of the painting, especially to identify the colors referred to in the title.

 

We use various information sources for learning in everyday life. Among these, television plays an important role, and social media is gaining influence. We noticed that some television programs are beginning to incorporate social-media texts, such as Twitter. Incorporation of social-media messages may influence our learning from these television programs in two ways. First, incorporating social-media messages can cause split attention effects (Sweller and Chandler, 1994). Thus, the retention of viewers will be decreased since they are required to pay attention to both the program contents and social-media messages. Second, if the cognitive process is harmed as mentioned above, the attitude change and appropriate judgement will be inhibited. The viewers cannot process important information fluently enough to change their attitude and judge critically. To explore these effects of incorporation of social-media messages, we conducted two experiments with participants from different academic backgrounds: humanities or information sciences. A fake television program arguing about a pseudo-scientific topic was made for the experiments. In both experiments, thirty participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: with and without social-media messages screened during the program. We investigated content retention, changes in attitude, and judgement of persuasiveness in different situations concerning the topic. Results indicated that, although there was a difference in the strength of the effects, common tendencies were found in both experiments. As expected, the participants in the without-social-media-messages condition performed better on a retention test and showed less positive attitude toward the pseudo-science. However, contrary to our prediction, participants who received social-media messages tended more to appropriately judged that the pseudo-scientific proposal was not very persuasive. Based on these results, the cognitive and emotional effects of the social-media messages are discussed.

 

Touching commodities during shopping facilitates purchase decisions. However, commodities are not always available to touch prior to purchase (e.g., online shopping). As an alternative strategy, just imagining touching an object and thinking about how it feels like (i.e., haptic imagery) has been found to facilitate psychological ownership. Our previous study revealed that haptic imagery increased psychological ownership via perceived control, regardless of the price of the imagined objects. In the present study, we investigated whether haptic imagery and effectance motivation could promote willingness to pay (i.e., WTP) through increased psychological ownership. Effectance motivation affects the feeling of efficacy and competence. When individuals associate ownership with control, they come to believe and expect that possessions provide control to their owner, and thereby serve as a source of effectance and competence related satisfactions. We used a 2 (imagery: haptic imagery vs. no imagery) × 2 (effectance motivation: high vs. low) between-participants design. Our results showed that haptic imagery directly promotes WTP, and this effect is fully mediated by psychological ownership. Further, effectance motivation also affects WTP. In the high effectance motivation condition, participants in the haptic imagery condition scored higher on WTP than did those in the no imagery condition. However, in the no imagery condition, participants with low effectance motivation scored higher on WTP than did participants with high effectance motivation. These results indicated that haptic imagery is one of the useful ways to satisfy the desire for control elicited by effectance motivation. The present study suggests that the simple cognitive practice of imaging touching elicits a strong and consistent effect on willingness to pay. To our knowledge, ours is the first study to demonstrate that manipulated effectance motivation, rather than individual differences, affects psychological ownership and WTP. Haptic imagery and effectance motivation are identified as innovative strategies for marketing.

 

The current study examined the stimulus-response compatibility effects between physically and psychologically “warm-cold” visual stimuli and physical temperatures of participants’ hand. Before the experimental sessions, participants were asked to immerse one hand in warm water and the other hand in cold water. In Experiment 1, either a warm or cold landscape picture (e.g., fire or snow) was presented in each trial. Participants were instructed to respond by pressing designated keys, with a warm hand for warm landscape pictures and with a cold hand for cold landscape pictures (consistent trials), or with a cold hand for warm landscape pictures and with a warm hand for cold landscape pictures (inconsistent trials). Results showed that the averaged response time in consistent trials was shorter than in inconsistent trials. In Experiment 2, either happy or sad face (suggesting psychological warmth and cold, respectively) was presented in each trial, and other procedures were similar to those in Experiment 1. As results, the averaged response time in consistent trials was shorter than in inconsistent trials only for happy faces. Therefore, our results suggested that information regarding physically and psychologically warmness-coldness are influenced each other (Williams & Bargh, 2008) and are shared between perceptual/cognitive and motor production systems.

 

Attentional orienting is sensitive to types of cues and task demands. A target at the periphery cued location (valid) usually attracts attention, nevertheless, if the cue to target onset asynchrony (SOA) is longer than 300 ms, the inhibition of return (IOR) is observed. Changing detection tasks to discrimination tasks would induce a smaller IOR in a later time course. The goal of this study is to examine whether IOR generated in a discrimination task by gaze cues. Gaze direction is a central cue but is shown to induce IOR at 2400 ms SOA in a localization task. Therefore in this study we introduced 4 levels of SOA (2000, 2400, 2800, and 3200 ms) to test whether discrimination tasks can generate IOR. Thirty participants (mean 26.64 years old) were recruited. The discrimination task requested participants to distinguish the direction of a triangle (upward or downward). We use 10 photographs of real faces to introduce gaze cues. The validity of the cue was set to be uninformative. The IOR was significant at 2400 ms SOA (6 ms) and 2800 ms SOA (7 ms). Our data suggested that the central cue, gaze direction, can also induce IOR in a discrimination task. Therefore gaze cues shifts attentional focus in a similar manner with periphery cues though in a different time course.

 

In this study, we examined hemodynamic changes related to the motor concept in associative relations among words. Subjects were 10 healthy young adults. All subjects were right-handed and Japanese. Before measurement, the subjects were provided with written informed consent after receiving a full explanation of the study. For the experiments, we used a multi-channel Near-infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) device. NIRS-imaging is an optical method which allows non-invasive measurements of changes in the concentration of oxy- and deoxy-hemoglobin in cerebral vessels. The measurement point intervals were 9mm and the probes were placed on bilateral areas covered from BA45 to posterior of BA22. The experiments’ stimuli were selected from pairs of stimulus words and associated words in the Associated Concept Dictionary (ACD) and presented in the form of a visual stimulation to the subjects. The ACD is a Japanese dictionary with a hierarchical structure of words associated by human subjects based on seven semantic relations (hypernym, hyponym, part/material, attribute, synonym, action and situation). All the subjects have participated in association experiments for ACD and understand the associative concepts and their functions. In this study, we used action relation pairs, which is the stimulus words are nouns and the associated words are action verbs. During the action concept task, deoxygenation of hemoglobin occurred in left BA22, while oxygenation occurred in left posterior of BA41. Deoxygenation also occurred in right posterior of BA45 to 44. Thus, it suggests that this response is related to the motor concept processing. This study clarified that it is possible to correlate brain activation to the associative relations among concepts using NIRS-imaging.

 

The individual difference in perception is revealed by the photo of #TheDress. With the same photo, some observers perceive a dress as blue-and-black dress and the others perceive it as white-and-gold. The current study hypothesize that the individual difference in perceiving spatial context contributes to the phenomenon. The estimation of illumination is affected by spatial context and therefore the perception of the color of a target surface is influenced. The hypothesis is tested with a dual-masked paradigm assessing the spatial context effect on the visual performance to a target. In the task, the participants were to detect a 4 cy/deg vertical Gabor target superimposed on a vertical pedestal (contrast ranged from 0-40%) in the presence of collinear and iso-oriented Gabor flankers (50% contrast). Among 53 participants, 38% reported seeing a blue-and-black dress (BB) and 57% reported seeing white-and-gold (WG). At low pedestal contrasts, the presence of flankers produced a greater target threshold reduction in the BB group. At high pedestal contrasts, no consistent difference in the flanker effect was found between groups. These flanker effects were fit to our sensitivity modulation model, which suggests the effects are multiplicative terms applied to both the excitatory and inhibitory terms of a divisive inhibition response function. The model parameters revealed that the greater flanker facilitation observed in BB group resulted from increment in flanker excitation rather than reduced flanker inhibition. The findings are in support of the notion that estimation of the global features of a scene, in turn, the perceived reflectance or color of a target surface is under the influence of sensitivity to context.

 

Visual crowding refers to a phenomenon that conscious identification of a peripheral object is severely impaired when it is surrounded by flankers. Evidence from our previous behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) studies indicates that semantic priming can occur even when the prime word was crowded and unrecognizable (Yeh et al., 2012; Zhou et al., 2016), suggesting that semantic information survives visual crowding. The present study used Magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate the time course of brain activation when an isolated or a crowded prime word preceded a single target word, and the prime was either semantically related or unrelated to the target. Results showed that the contrast between related and unrelated isolated primes activated the left middle temporal gyrus (MTG) during 400-600ms after the onset of the subsequent target. For the contrast between related and unrelated crowded primes, however, activation was shown in the middle frontal gyrus (MFG), inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), and postcentral gyrus during 400-600ms. These results suggest that, while both isolated prime and crowded prime lead to semantic activation so as to affect target processing, when the target is preceded by a crowded prime it requires more spread processing in the semantic network than when preceded by an isolated prime.

 

Kurumada & Jaeger (2015) claimed that speakers hold comprehension consideration in the expense of their production cost. Using Japanese transitive sentences in a spoken-recall paradigm, they demonstrated that Japanese speakers were more likely to attach case markers to animate objects than to inanimate objects (Exp’t 1), in order to make it clear that the second nouns are patients rather than agents. However, we failed to replicate the animacy effect in a written-recall paradigm with Korean. Instead, we found that speakers’ production preferences were remarkably influenced by the distributional patterns associated with case markers and word orders. First, we conducted the written-recall production experiment in which word order, the animacy of direct objects, and the ellipsis of object case markers. Second, using the Korean spoken corpus, we computed the degree of surprisal to encounter sentences corresponding to our manipulation. Our key findings were as follows. 1) Overall, Korean speakers strongly preferred to produce case markers and to rearrange non-canonical OSV to canonical SOV word orders. 2) Korean speakers did not show particular preference due to animacy. 3) We observed that surprisal was significantly proportional to speakers’ behaviors for the use of object case markers and the use of SOV order. Of interest, the degree of surprisal based on OSV sentences strongly predicted speakers’ bias to attach case markers increasingly, whereas it predicted speakers’ willingness not to change word orders. On the other hand, the degree of surprisal based on sentences with null case markers strongly predicted speakers’ bias to change word orders from OSVs to SOVs, instead of attaching case markers. Our findings showed that speakers diligently exploited the distributional information, attempting to achieve a trade-off between production ease and comprehension goal.

 

One of critical issues in executive control is how the nervous system can exert the flexibility to inhibit a prepotent response to meet the sudden change of the environment. Many studies employed the stop signal task with measurements of response times and also with a variety of devices such as EEG, EMG and dynamometers for investigating the point of no return and its locus in the neural system during the stopping processes. The present study aims to elucidate the mechanisms of the inhibitory control by using EEG, EMG and detailed response force measurements. We measured the response force, response speed, peak force and rising rate to peak force in Go trials, Stop trials and also partial response trials in the Stop condition. The results showed that the reaction time was slower and the peak force was stronger in Go trials than in erroneous Stop trials (non-cancelled stop trials). This replicated previous findings (e.g.: De Jong et al., 1990; Ko et al., 2012). Importantly, we found that the peak force increased as a function of the stop signal delay but did not reach to the peak force exerted in the Go trials. This peak force increase may indicate that the inhibitory system is still in effect even after a response is well on its way suggesting that the point of no return, if any, is dependent only on the brain processing speed and the time it takes for the signal to be transmitted to the point of interest. Moreover, the latency from pinch-response to peak force was longer in Go trials than in non-cancelled (Stop-respond) trials, indicating that the inhibition system has an active role even when our motor behavior seems to already be committed. We also calculated the peak force in the non-cancelled responses and found that the peak force in most of the non-cancelled trials (61%) were much smaller than the peak force of Go trials (2SD below the mean). These patterns of results indicate that participants could partially inhibit their responses despite that they could not fully stop their prepotent action which suggesting the point of no return could occur in both central and peripheral nervous systems.

 

The endowment effect – a tendency to value a good more when owning it – has been attributed to aversion to loss caused by change in reference point. Köszegi and Rabin proposed an expectation-based reference-dependent model in which the reference point is stochastic. The model makes unique predictions on the endowment effect on risk that have received mixed empirical support thus far. In this study, we investigated whether the inconsistent findings are due to the effectiveness of the endowment manipulation. Methods. Each subject carried out 72 trials for the experiment. On each trial, the subjects were first endowed with a lottery. Following the presentation of the endowed lottery, a new lottery was presented. The new lottery generated based on the endowment with reward probability difference (±15%, ±10%, ±5%) and the expected value difference (0, ±2 coins). Subjects can decide whether to keep the endowed lottery or switch to the new lottery. In either case, the lottery she/he eventually chose became the endowment on the next choice. Results. 30 subjects participated in the experiment. First, our results show subjects tended to keep the lottery endowed by their own choice but not the endowment initially given to the subjects. Second, consistent with the theoretical prediction, the endowment effect (the frequency of keeping the endowed lottery) was affected by the probability of reward associated with the endowed lottery. Third, this effect was mediated by the difference in probability of reward between the lotteries. That is, subjects became more risk averse/seeking when endowment had a higher/smaller reward probability. Together, these results indicate that probability difference mediated the reference-dependent preference and that the effect of stochastic reference point on risk attitudes was larger under greater sense of ownership.

 

Under our social network, easily observed phenomena about social interaction that a person would depend on significant other's opinion to make the decision. However, little research focuses on how romantic relationship affects on shopping behavior among young couples. In this study, we explore the interaction of young couples over one year and expect the areas responsible for theory of mind (TOM, especially temporal-parietal junction, or TPJ) would be especially activated when considering others. The behavioral results showed clearly the modulation of the romantic relationship on one’s own buying decision: compared to one along make the decision, people tend to change their original buying ratio in the preference of other's ratings. The neural activity at the time of buying decision revealed the strongly activated regions in the TPJ, anterior insula, and superior temporal sulcus associated with TOM. Next, the psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analysis was used to estimate the functional connectivity in the rTPJ as a seed region in the conflict and consensus conditions, the results show that caudate, insula, anterior cingulate and the medial prefrontal area had increased connectivity while considering the other's rank. In our task, the evaluation of shopping network is explored from the significant other outside the scanner before the shopping decision (how the other likes the decision). The result implies that the significant other's attitudes did modulate the purchase decisions when couples face the conflict via real-time social interaction.