Session Detail

Metamemory – one’s knowledge and awareness about memory – is of vital importance to one’s development and contains three parts: knowledge about memory, control over memory and monitoring on memory. Among these three, monitoring is the most important which includes prospective monitory such as EOJ, JOL and FOK, and retrospective monitory – judgment of confidence (JOC). Although prospective monitory has been studied extensively, there is not enough research on retrospective monitory. Previous studies have found self-efficacy and positive and negative affect have impact on participants’ accuracy of JOC, yet there’s no evidence showing the relationship between anxiety and retrospective monitory since anxiety has been an ever-increasing problem for the society. Therefore, in the present study, we tend to explore the relationship between state anxiety and accuracy of JOC. We manipulated level of anxiety of participants by using continuous calculation task and structured interview respectively on experimental and control groups. Then we measured participants’ accuracy of JOC using a 10 questions questionnaire about a 5-min video they watched before. We found that participants in experimental group had a less accurate JOC compared to people in control group and that the more anxious one was, the less accurate his JOC would be. Although the interaction between group and gender was not significant, there was still a trend that male and female participants had different patterns. Meanwhile, types of learning – latent and overt learning – also seemed to have an impact on JOC accuracy.

 

Fearful faces attract our attention easily and they can also serve as distractors for a visual working memory (VWM) task. Event-related potentials (ERPs), and especially a component termed contralateral delay activity (CDA), have been used to index the VWM storage. Previous studies utilizing CDA have shown that storage of facial identities in VWM is affected by fearful faces as distractors. Distractor effects of other facial expressions have not been investigated. In addition, it is not clear if VWM for the face identity and its interference by facial emotions correlates with participant’s VWM capacity for neutral objects. In the present study, we first measured the participants’ VWM capacity for neutral objects, and then investigated their ability to store facial identities while recording ERPs. By using the CDA component to index VWM maintenance, we found that participants with high capacity for neutral objects were more accurate in face identity task than low-capacity participants. The CDA results showed different pattern for the high and low VWM capacity group suggesting that high VWM participants maintain the similar visual information across neutral, angry and happy two-target conditions while angry faces as targets boosted the VWM capacity for the low capacity group. In addition, different emotional distractors would have different effects on the VWM maintenance. The results suggested that when the VWM resources are sufficient, visual information can be maintained similarly for the different facial emotions, but when the VWM resources are limited, the maintenance of the threatening faces is preferred.

 

The interrogative word shenme ‘what’ plays a critical role in expressing questions (e.g., shenme shuiguo meiyou ren chi? ‘what fruit did nobody eat’), but few empirical studies have addressed the comprehension of its non-interrogative meaning in statements (e.g., shenme shuiguo Dou meiyou ren chi. ‘Nobody ate any fruit’). It is generally agreed that shenme ‘what’ expresses the (non-interrogative) universal interpretation when combined with Dou, as in the example above. In Mandarin Chinese, this characteristic is also shared by a negative polarity item renhe ‘any’, which is a synonym to shenme ‘what’ as in renhe shuiguo Dou meiyou ren chi ‘Nobody ate any fruit’. To compare the interpretations of shenme ‘what’ in the linguistic context with and without Dou with the interpretation of NPI renhe ‘any’ before Dou, we conducted four behavioral experiments in which we employed the Question-Statement Task developed by Zhou and Crain (2011) to examine the interpretations between spoken and written sentences by mature speakers of Mandarin. Different from ‘renhe+Dou’, which resulted in the universal interpretation consistently, ‘shenme+Dou’ depended on the presentation modality and the position of shenme ‘what’ in the sentences. The results showed that ‘shenme’ at subject position which combined with Dou (e.g., shenme ma Dou meiyou mai bingqilin ‘None of horses bought ice creams’) was more likely to be interpreted as an non-interrogative expression (62.5%) in written sentences than in spoken sentences (6.9%), while at object position (e.g., shenme shuiguo tuzi Dou meiyou chi ‘None of rabbits ate the fruit’), “shenme+Dou” was accepted as universal expression with higher possibility in written sentences (95.8%) than in auditory sentences (75%). The present findings identify that much attention should be taken into syntax/pragmatics interface to elucidate how they interact with each other.

 

Naturally occurring sounds are routinely periodic. The ability to phase-lock to such periodicity facilitates pitch perception and interaural time differences (ITDs) determination in binaural localization. We examined whether deficient pitch processing in individuals with congenital amusia (tone deafness) is accompanied by impaired ability to localize peripheral binaural musical pitch at the short-term memory level. If common mechanisms subserve processing of temporal-fine-structure based pitch and ITDs, then deficient processing of one feature should impair performance on the other. Thus, we measured ITD discrimination thresholds using an adaptive-tracking procedure for lateralizing musical tone pairs separated by different semitone intervals. ITD thresholds were unimpaired by concurrent pitch changes, even when pitch variations were increased to 5 semitones in congenital amusics. For short-term memory tasks, the amusic group performed significantly worse than matched controls in probed pitch recall, irrespective of the complexity level of concurrent variations along the ITD dimension of the melodic sequence. Interestingly, despite normal peripheral ITD thresholds, amusic individuals performed worse than controls in recalling probed locations of tones within a sequence of musical notes originating from different ITD-simulated locations. Our results suggest that individuals with congenital amusia are unimpaired in peripheral signal encoding to determine musical pitch and process binaural ITDs. The results further imply that musical pitch and binaural ITDs can be processed separately at the auditory short-term memory level. Consistent with studies proposing higher-order processing deficits in amusia, our findings demonstrate that pitch-specific deficits in amusia are unlikely to be due to temporal-fine-structure coding in the auditory periphery and provide further evidence of dissociated, but impaired, pitch and ITD encoding process at the auditory short-term memory level.

 

Associating written symbols to speech sounds are crucial for literacy acquisition. Here we investigate the long-term learning effect of orthographic–phonological associations with magnetoencephalography. Eleven native Chinese and thirteen Finnish participants were measured during an audio-visual experiment using Chinese characters in which auditory only (A), visual only (V), audio-visual congruent (AVC) and audio-visual incongruent (AVI) stimuli were presented randomly. To make sure the participants paid equal attention to both auditory and visual modality, there were testing trials occurring with 7.5% possibility in which the memory of character and/or sound one trial back were tested. Minimum-norm source estimate of the event-related fields were computed by combining freesurfer average brain template and MEG data. Permutation test with spatial-temporal clustering revealed a congruency effect (p=0.018) in the Chinese group but not in the Finnish group. This effect was mainly localized in the left auditory cortex (Heschl's gyrus) and showed stronger activation to incongruent audio-visual pairs in a late time window (465-875ms). Between group comparisons showed stronger brain activations to the auditory and audiovisual stimuli in the left and right superior and middle temporal cortex in the Chinese group compared with the Finnish group. The Chinese group also had stronger activations in the left motor, left and right fusiform cortices when presented with visual stimuli. In conclusion, learned associations between Chinese characters and speech sounds lead to stronger cortical response for incongruent audio-visual pairs in Heschl’s gyrus and larger activation in brain areas where visual and auditory information are processed and integrated.

 

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of commonality search training on creative idea generation. Our previous study found that searching the commonality between apparently unrelated objects helps one find original perspectives. Based on the results, we assumed that one could generate original ideas using commonality search as a strategy if s/he repeatedly practices it. Forty-six undergraduates were assigned to one of two conditions: commonality search and word association. While the participants in the commonality search condition listed the commonalities between the apparently unrelated objects (e.g. a strawberry and television), those in the word association condition listed as many words as they remembered from each object. Thereafter, the participants in both the conditions were asked to list their ideas about the unusual uses of wire hanger. Two independent evaluators scored the ideas generated by the participants on a 7-point scale in terms of feasibility, originality, and attractiveness. The results revealed no significant differences between the conditions with respect to the quantity and quality of ideas. The results also showed that the correlations between the number of ideas and the feasibility of ideas differed between conditions. Specifically, in the word association condition, there was a significant and negative correlation between them, indicating that the more the ideas were generated, the less feasible they were. On the other hand, in the commonality search condition, there was no significant correlation between them. Although the effects of the commonality search training were not seen in the quantity and quality of ideas, it was seen in the relationship between the quantity and quality of ideas. The results suggest that commonality search training may improve the process by which one generates ideas.

 

We investigated the effects of recalling bitter experiences on taste preference. There are many expressions for describing feelings using words referring to tastes, such as bitter or sweet, suggesting a close link between feeling and taste. We assumed that one tends to regulate his/her unpleasant feelings by consuming something with an opposite taste. Specifically, we hypothesized that one prefers something sweet when s/he has a "bitter" feeling. Sixty-nine undergraduates were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: bitter, sad, and neutral. Participants in the bitter and sad conditions described their experiences of failure and loss respectively, and rated the valence of their recalled experience. Those in the neutral condition described a place they had been to, recalling that experience from stimuli including tree, air, water, sun, and earth. All the participants scored their present emotion states. Finally the participants rated how much they were willing to eat each chocolate and chose a chocolate that they wanted to eat most out of four chocolates with sweet, bitter, salty, or sour tastes. The results revealed that the experience recalled by the participants in the bitter condition were more self-accusing than those in the sad condition. Further, the participants in both the bitter and sad conditions had more negative, less aroused, and more self-accusing feelings than those in the neutral condition. Finally, the participants in the bitter condition chose the sweet chocolate more than those in the sad condition, and those in the sad condition wanted to eat the sweet chocolate less than those in the neutral condition. We concluded that recalling bitter experiences enhances the preference for eating something sweet through the link between feeling and taste.

 

In this study, we compared college readers’ comprehension processes when reading texts with different perspectives presented in different orders. An authentic article discussing the issue of “Whether ADHD patients needed to take medicine?” was modified and manipulated the order of describing two opposing views on this topic: one version stating “for medicine use” information first then “against medicine use” information second, another version reversed the order of information. All information in individual section of “for medicine use” and “against medicine use” was the same across all conditions. Both versions of text also had an identical introduction section. Seventy mature readers participated in this study and they were randomly assigned into those two reading groups. Participants read texts sentence by sentence on computer and reading times were recorded. Their background knowledge on ADHD, free recall data, reading comprehension scores and reading spans were also collected. In addition, the simulation program of the Landscape Model of comprehension were employed to model readers’ performance following the standard procedures: First, we determined text reading cycles by sentence boundary. Next, we parsed major nodes for each sentence and identified the coherence relationships among these nodes. We then set the parameter values for these relationships as sources of activation which include direct retrieval, referential connections, causal inferences. Finally, an input matrix was formed from the above steps and was submitted to the program for simulation. A resulting activation matrix and a connection matrix were produced for each separate simulation representing predictions of the Landscape model. The results showed that the activation matrix information significantly correlates with reading time data and the connection matrix information accounts recall data significantly. The patterns indicate that the Landscape Model effectively simulate readers’ comprehension performance. Reading opposing view information in different order did not affect readers’ amount of recall and neither did it on readers’ attitudes toward prescribing medicine for ADHD patients.

 

Previous studies found mind wandering alter readers’ reading behaviors related with lexical properties of words (e.g. word frequency effect). However, how about syntactic properties? Does mind wandering also alter readers’ reading behaviors related with the syntactic structure of a sentence? The present study focused on to which extent the garden path sentences alter readers' frequencies of mind wandering and eye-movements. To further examine the mechanism the underlying mechanism, readers' working memory capacity (WMC) was also measured. The result revealed that readers with high WMC showed more task unrelated thoughts (TUTs) when reading the garden path sentences than the non-garden path ones. Whereas, readers showed equivalent amount of mind wandering when reading the garden path and non-garden path sentences. Furthermore, the eye-movement behaviors analyses revealed that readers with high WMC tended to show garden path effect (i.e. the difference of total reading time between garden path sentences and non-garden path sentences) on critical region (i.e. disambiguous region ) prior to TUT response. However, the garden path effect was attenuated for readers with low WMC. The comparison of attenuation of word frequency and garden path effects during mind wandering was discussed.

 

The existence of variability among people in their cognitive abilities is a well-known fact. There are a number of ways in which cognitive and neurophysiological measures have been consistently used to explain such variability. However, little has been done to explore how the sources of such variability in cognition are influenced by individual differences in personality traits. Dispositional mindfulness and anxiety are two reciprocally linked traits that have been independently attributed to a range of cognitive functions. Nonetheless, there are no studies which have considered how the interaction between these two traits influences executive function. The current study investigated the relationship between these two traits and measures of executive control. Two groups of healthy young adults (divided into high mindfulness, low anxiety and low mindfulness, high anxiety) performed an attentional network task, a color Stroop task, and a change detection paradigm of visual working memory capacity task. Results showed that high mindfulness, low anxiety individuals were more accurate than the low mindfulness, high anxiety individuals on Stroop and change detection tasks. Additionally, the former group was shown to be more sensitive in detecting change and exhibited higher working memory capacity than the latter group. The present research attempts to bridge the gap between the literatures those have investigated mindfulness and anxiety independently. It also offers a direction for future studies looking at interventional programs such as meditation or cognitive behavioral therapy and may also guide how to identify individuals who might benefit most from such interventions.

 

We investigated how long visual memory for moving stimuli could be retained. The stimuli consisted of a moving circle. There are two sessions in the experiment and the second session were conducted four weeks after the first session. In the first session, some stimuli appearing in the second session were presented two times each. The participants observed them under incidental condition. The second session consisted of a study phase and of a test phase. In the study phase, the participants observed stimuli in a manner similar the first session. Half of the stimuli had been presented in the first session, and the half of them were novel. Then, the participants were given a surprise recognition test. In this task, they had to decide whether the presented stimuli had appeared in the prior study phase or not. As a result, it was found that the presentation times of stimuli affected the performance of the recognition test, and the hit rate for the stimuli which had been presented in the first session was higher than that for the stimuli which had not. This indicates that visual memory for moving stimuli observed under the incidental condition can be remained for long-term.

 

Human visual system can estimate mean size of a set of items effectively; however, little is known about whether information on each visual field contributes equally to the mean size estimation. In this study, we examined whether a left-side bias (LSB)—perceptual judgment tends to depend more heavily on left visual field’s inputs—impacts mean size estimation. Participants were instructed to estimate the mean size of 16 spots. In half of the trials, the mean size of the spots on the left side was larger than that on the right side (the Left-larger condition) and vice versa (the Right-larger condition). Our results illustrated a LSB: a larger estimated mean size was found in the Left-larger condition than the Right-larger condition (Experiment 1), and the LSB vanished when participants’ attention was cued to the right side (Experiment 2). Furthermore, the magnitude of LSB increased with stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) when spots on the left side were presented earlier than the right side. In contrast, the LSB vanished and then induced a reversed effect with SOA when spots on the right side were presented earlier (Experiment 3). This study offers the first piece of evidence suggesting that the LSB does have a significant influence on mean size estimation of a group of items, which is induced by a leftward attentional bias that enhanced the prior entry effect on the left side.

 

Inhibitory functions are crucial for keeping our behaviors under control, and it is prone to the influence of aging. One way to categorize inhibition is based on how it corresponds to willful control. While controlled inhibition is prone to the influence of subjective will, automatic inhibition is less so. In the current study, we carried out two experiments to explore the impact of aging on implicit inhibition. In Experiment 1, we adopted a location negative priming (LNP) task where the participant responded to a pair of prime and probe stimuli (white circle) in every trial. We manipulated the duration between the response to prime and the probe onset (response–stimulus interval, RSI, between 389, 931, 1463, and 1995ms) to explore the evolution of NP effect across time and also compared age difference in the time course of NP. In Experiment 2, we combined Go/No-go task with the LNP task where the participant was instructed to withhold response upon seeing yellow circle in the prime, but respond otherwise. We found that for the young participants, the shape of NP effect function changed more gradually across time than the elder’s. Moreover, the NP effect at the 389 ms RSI is relatively large than the other RSIs. For the elderly participants, the time course of NP effect appears to be a inversed-V shape curve which peaked at the 931 ms RSI. For the second experiment, we found that for the young participants, NP effect of Go trials is much larger than No-go trials, yet for the elderly it did not differ. To summarize, we found that aging impacts how implicit function is manifested after it is triggered. Further exploration with neuroimaging techniques and theoretical accounts for the age-related of implicit inhibition will be discussed.

 

Many economic studies have demonstrated that the sources of income—whether earned through efforts or obtained based on luck—can influence people’s willingness to further redistribution of wealth. To investigate the underlying cognitive mechanisms for such behaviors, we examined whether the origin of social status, a variable that is strongly associated with income in the society, would modulate the satisfaction of monetary distribution by people with different social statuses that were either determined by efforts or by luck. Specifically, in the first stage of the experiment college students were labelled as winners or losers against an opponent based on pure luck (i.e., random drawing), a mixture of luck and efforts (i.e., performance in a math estimation task), and real efforts (i.e., a number-line dissection task). The winners in all experimental contexts received the same amount of monetary reward, while the losers received nothing. In the second stage of the experiment, all participants were asked to make satisfaction ratings on the distribution of an additional amount of monetary reward between themselves and the opponent. The results showed that in the second stage all participants preferred to receive more money than their opponent, but the preference was stronger when the social status in the first stage of the experiment was determined by real efforts than by pure luck. On the other hand, the social status per se (i.e., being a winner or a loser) did not modulate people’s satisfaction of reward distribution. Furthermore, people seemed to perceive their performance in the math estimation task being determined by luck rather than by efforts. In summary, we found that participants involved in the real effort task were more driven by self-interests, while participants involved in the pure luck task showed higher satisfaction with fair or self-less distribution. 

 

Match effects of object orientation in the sentence-picture verification task are consistently smaller than object shape, color, and size. We hypothesize that this may be due to the fact that the orientation objects are small and manipulable. This study asks the questions if object size constraints object orientation effects, such that effects for smaller, manipulable, items are smaller than for larger, nonmanipulable objects. Our pre-registered experiment manipulated two within-participant variables: object size (large, small) and matching of probe sentence and target picture (matched orientation, mismatched orientation); one between-participant variable: languages (English, Dutch, Chinese). Two predicted results were to be confirmed based on our pilot study: (1) the orientation effects for the large objects would be beyond those for the small objects; (2) the effects generalize across languages and that language will not be a significant moderator of the observed effects. The current results confirm the first prediction, but the extraordinary effects of Chinese reveal the moderator of languages to be explored. This talk will present the works of our pre-registered experiment and the coming exploratory study.

 

Statistical learning (SL) is the ability to detect regularities in the environment, and plays a critical role in survival of organisms. Previous literature suggests that SL is a general mechanism for learning and processing any type of sensory input that unfolds across time and space, as empirical evidence shows that adults and infants can readily pick up on regularities among adjacent elements. However, whether SL is also possible when the dependent elements are nonadjacent remains to be determined. To answer this question, we employed a visual statistical learning (VSL) task in which 24 relatively complex visual shapes were randomly organized for each participant to create eight nonadjacent triplets. In the sequential condition, the visual shapes in triplets appeared one after the other, with a fixation cross separating different triplets. In the simultaneous condition, the visual shapes in triplets appeared from left to right in the same frame. After a familiarization phase in which each triplet appeared 20 times, participants were asked to perform 32 trials of familiarity judgement and 32 trials of recognition. The results demonstrated that participants were capable of learning nonadjacent dependencies in sequential and simultaneous visual shapes with comparable accuracy. Moreover, significant correlation was detected between participants’ IQ scores (as measured by Block Design) and their implicit knowledge of the nonadjacent dependencies (as measured by the task of familiarity judgment), suggesting a common mechanism supporting SL for both sequential and simultaneous dependencies. On the other hand, participants’ working memory (as measured by Symmetry Span) was only significantly correlated with their explicit knowledge of the nonadjacent dependency in sequential but not in simultaneous visual shapes, implying that there might also be specific mechanisms supporting these two kinds of SL. Further research is needed to examine the relationship between SL of different kinds of dependencies and implicit/explicit learning capacities.

 

Facial expressions are not only salient signals to express one’s emotional state but also an ingratiating strategy for social interaction and communication. Embodied emotion, a model of emotion contagion, is proposed as a two-stage process, including automatic facial mimicry and muscular feedback. The present study aims at unraveling the underlying neural circuitry and its temporal scenario of embodied emotion by combining recordings of facial muscular activity, magnetoencephalographic signals, and self-report pleasantness rating. Forty subjects (mean age 25.4 ±4.3 years old; 20 males) were recruited in the study. Each subject was instructed to passively view or voluntarily imitate the displayed video clips (2 seconds each) of smiling with different strengths (0%, 50%, and 100%) and then to report his/her pleasantness level at the end of each block (20 clips in each block). The electromyography (EMG) of the bilateral zygomaticus major muscles and the whole-brain magnetoencephalography (MEG, Neuromag Vectorview system) were simultaneously recoded when they were exposed to smiling video clips. Spatiotemporal maps of brain activity for the event-related alpha-band MEG data were estimated using the beamforming method, followed by parametric analysis with flexible design (p<0.05, uncorrected; extended cluster size > 20) for each condition. Significant bilateral EMG activations and elevated pleasantness levels were found in both passive viewing and voluntarily imitating conditions. The temporal profile of brain responses was partitioned into three time windows: anticipation, information catching, and behavioral response periods. During information catching period, we found the inferior parietal lobule, precuneus, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, somatosensory association cortex, and inferior frontal gyrus under imitation instruction. The results of passive viewing showed the posterior insula, premotor, precuneus, supramarginal gyrus, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Instruction/intention is a strong top-down cognitive control and modulates the information process in the brain. Our findings demonstrated two distinct cortical pathways responding to smile expression: voluntary facial mimicry utilizes simulation for information catching, whereas spontaneous facial mimicry engages neural system of mentalizing. These suggest MEG as a potential tool for understanding temporal dynamics of neural networks in emotional information processing.

 

Inhibiting distractors is important for goal-directed behaviors. However, with the context changes, previous distractors that are detrimental for survival might become beneficial. Therefore, releasing the previous inhibition whenever the environment needs is also important for us to adapt to such dynamic world. The aim of the present study is to examine how cognitive resource and awareness of changing context influence the modulation of inhibitory control. We manipulated the probability of a prime correctly predicting the following target during three phases in a priming task. A prime would act as a distractor when the probability is low (25%), while act as a useful cue when the probability is high (75%). In addition, we also measured participants’ working memory capacity (WMC) as the index of cognitive resource and their awareness of the change of context contingency. The results showed that, regardless of WMC, only participants aware of changing context modulated inhibitory process corresponding to the present context contingency when the stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) is short (experiment 1). However, such effect of awareness disappeared when SOA became longer (experiment 2). Such finding revealed that awareness of context might have more impact on the modulation of inhibition than WMC and such influence might reduce with decreased task demand. This is the first study investigating how both WMC and awareness affected people’s ability to modulate inhibition with changing context. The implication about the impact of cognitive resource and implicit learning on inhibitory control was discussed.

 

Previous literature pointed out that aging does not affect the basic characteristics of the landing movement control during stair climbing. At the meantime, falling from stairs seems to be a common cause of physical injury among the elderly. We wonder if visual perception of and action on the same stair could dissociate somehow and bring potential conflicts in information when landing fails. Because landing movement is a three-dimensional and complex movement, in the current study we simplify the experiment and test participants on their accuracy in passive perceiving and active estimating a one-dimensional length. We tested twenty young and twenty elderly participants on their visual discrimination (perceptual) and limb emulation (motor) of one-dimensional length. The perceptual and motor tasks were carried out along three orthogonal axes in space, respectively, and the accuracies and precisions of responses were analyzed. The results indicated that accuracies of visual perception and manual estimation do not differ, but both differ from feet estimation. In addition, the elderly showed smaller standard deviation than the young group. Based on these results, we suggest that the elderly are more conservative in feet movements, and actually more stable in making length judgment than the young group. The current findings provide novel information regarding the characteristics in the input and output sides of the cognitive system.

 

Posture modulates impressions of a person. In daily life, we often try to improve our impressions by taking “good” postures particularly when others evaluate us (such as job interview and dating). However, it has not been empirically examined whether such attempts to modulate impressions are indeed effective and, if so, which impressions are modulated. Here we examined the above questions by having participants report first impressions from pictures where other persons took “good” or “bad” postures. We took pictures of 16 persons from 3 viewing angles (front, side, back) while they were standing in “good” and “bad” postures. They were free to define “good” or “bad” postures and no other instruction was given. In total, 96 posture stimuli (2 postures x 3 angles x 16 persons) were prepared. Thirty-five participants were separately recruited and asked to report how the person in each picture appeared attractive, trustworthy, and dominant by using a 5-point Likert scale. The attractiveness, trustworthiness, and dominance judgment tasks were performed in separate sessions. The order of stimulus presentation was randomized within each block. We found that: (1) The persons in “good” postures were generally rated more attractive and trustworthy but dominance did not change with postures. (2) The improvement of attractiveness and trustworthiness were observed with the all angles. (3) The changes in attractiveness and trustworthiness were larger and more variable with the side view than the front and back views. Evidently, by taking intuitively good postures, people can improve attractiveness and trustworthiness but the changes in impressions depend on the viewing angles. These findings imply that people naturally know how to improve attractiveness and trustworthiness by taking “good” postures in the front view (and perhaps consequently in the back view) but know less in the side view.

 

The influence of the first language (L1) on the acquisition of the second language (L2) is an issue of importance. A well-known example of negative transfer is that Japanese speakers who learn English as a L2 often have difficulty in hearing and producing /l/ and /r/ accurately. Such negative transfer Taiwan is an abundant environment with multiple languages coexisted. It provides a ground for investigating whether a L2 immersion environment can reverse the negative transfer from L1. Among other phonetic contrast, a salient mismatch between Mandarin and Taiwanese is on retroflexㄓ(zhi)、ㄔ(chi )、ㄕ(shi-) and nonretroflexㄗ(zi)、ㄘ(ci)、ㄙ(si). The retroflex is absent in Taiwanese. We investigate the issue mentioned above by examining negative transfer at speech perception in Taiwanese-Mandarin bilingual adults. The participants recruited were college students with proficiency in Mandarin. They were assigned to either Mandarin monolingual group (MMG) or Taiwanese-Mandarin bilingual group (TMG), according to a Taiwanese vocabulary test and a language experience questionnaire. All participants were asked to perform a phoneme discrimination task in which five phonetic contrasts (stop, fricative, affricate, nasal, retroflex) of Mandarin were included. The results revealed that comparing to MMG, participants in TMG show a selective difficulty in discriminating retroflex but not other phonetic contrasts. This evidence supports a negative transfer between Taiwanese and Mandarin happened along with the language development of individuals. Moreover, although an immersion environment can improve proficiency in L2, it failed to reverse the negative transfer on L2 speech perception.

 

Stereopsis vision proof that without 2D form cues, human eye can see 3D through binocular fusion cues only. What is the mechanism of binocular matching? The stereoscopic matching is a very interesting unconsciousness processes. We know it’s very fast as milliseconds. Will it be possible even in this short time, there is already have some kind of subconscious or conscious there? Purpose: The study try to manipulate different cognitive levels of 2D cues in stereoscopic 3D vision to see the influence of cognitive cues for 3D formation. Hope the results of this study can give some idea about if an unconscious process (binocular matching) have levels of consciousness involve. And through reaction time can we measure the different level of consciousness effect or not? Methods: First we manipulate the form cues: with 2D form and without 2D form. The 3D depth cues embedded in stereopsis vision, so the 2D and 3D cues might be same or different. The second manipulation of experiments is the instrument to present the stimulus. We use two ways to present the stimulus. One is the bare eyes projection, and the other goggle glasses. The former one left and right eye’s images are not superimposed. The later one two eye’s images superimposed in the same place, so might see a little form cues there. Results & Conclusion: We find out that binocular matching is a gradual process. When 2D cues and 3D cues are the same, then the fusion time to perceive the 3D is not much different of no form cue, geometric form cue, and meaningful word cue. But when 2D cues and 3D cues are inconsistent, then this inconsistent influence is bigger than three levels of 2D form cues. So with from cues will help the processing of 3D fusion and recognition. But binocular 3D fusion with-form or without-form is also possible through different processing channel, without-form situation direct access by the zero-crossing matching channel, and with-form case is a kind of step by step serial processing. Which means the reaction time will not be longer of no-form than with form in 3D vision. We also found two ways of presentation the stimulus (bare two eyes projection / goggle glasses) has only little difference.

 

In Japan, 20.5% of older adults use smartphones (MIC, 2016). The low utilization rate is thought to be the result of problems related to usability of smartphones and the few opportunities of learning how to use it. To improve the rate of smartphones utilization, it is necessary to clarify the problems associated with using smartphones and explore an optimal support for learning process. This study conducted a longitudinal usability test that required 16 older adults to use smartphones for 4 weeks. In addition, we examined the effect of learning by undertaking actual activities. The participants were divided into two groups: intervention (N = 9) and control (N = 7). All participants participated in the usability test twice (at first and last week). In the second week, the intervention group participated in the lesson that allowed them to take pictures in the garden; this was followed by printing the same and making a portfolio using these pictures in the second week. The control group only participated. The log data suggested that the large individual differences were recognized in the use time and the number of use, irrespective of the group. However, the intervention group tended to spend more time on the application used in lesson. Further, the results of the usability test indicated that the intervention group performed better than the control group. While analyzing the daybook, differences between the two groups were not observed in the various newly discovered functions. However, the text mining analysis revealed that the description of the function related to the photograph as being more frequent in the intervention group. In the future, it is necessary to examine factors that are contributing to individual differences in the learning process. Moreover, the learning opportunity provided through actual activities seemed to have an effect on promoting learning.

 

This study investigated gender differences in subjective impression evaluations of shapes of 3D products. As a typical example of 3D product design, we focused on the shape of liquid soap bottles. Since the relation between shapes and evaluations is nonlinear, clarifying exactly what components of shape designs females and males are evaluating is not easy. We developed an analytical framework to investigate these gender differences by using a combination of spherical harmonics (SPHARM) and conditional autoregressive (CAR) modeling. SPHARM is a parametric surface description that uses spherical harmonics as its basic function. To extract their major morphological features, we used SPHARM to convert 3D surface data on the shape of 22 liquid soap bottles into multivariate coefficients. Then, we performed a principal component analysis (PCA) of these coefficients. Extracted morphological features were related to the aspect ratio in the frontal plane, thickness, and roundness. Subsequently, participants rated their subjective impressions of bottle shapes on a semantic differential scale. We examined relations between bottles’ major morphological features (i.e., PC scores) and their subjective impressions based on the CAR model, which is one of the spatial statistical models, using RStan package. We assumed that the relatively smaller the spatial correlation along a PC, the more attention was paid to the component in impression evaluation. Estimation results of random effects suggest that components of interest in impression evaluation of shapes differ between males and females.

 

Spatial disorientation (SD) is a temporary condition resulting from flying into poor weather conditions with low or no visibility. Under these conditions, the pilot may be deprived of an external visual horizon, which is critical to maintaining a correct sense of up and down while flying. Spatial disorientation is a critical issue for pilots during the flight. However, few pilot performance assessment monitors the pilot cognition and his behavior, and few studies have shown the EEG dynamics during spatial disorientation. In this study, we investigated the pilot’s brain dynamics in a 3D simulated aviation environment to find out possible solutions of disorientation. By studying the EEG signals during the flight, we observed that there are no differences between subjects under normal condition. However, when entering clouds, pilots who eventually spatial disoriented and crashed in the flight simulator had a higher power of gamma band (31-50Hz) in frontal, parietal, sensorimotor cortex, and occipital. In addition, we found power desynchronization of gamma band in pilots without SD after entering clouds. On the contrary, we found power synchronization of gamma-band in pilots with SD after entering clouds. With our findings, we hope to provide good neurophysiological indicators, aim to provide better and safer flights.

 

One of the mechanisms of human creativity is the manipulation of structures (Arthor, 2009). Music is an example of the manifestation of such creativity. Music has developed through manipulation of existing structure, which has brought into new structures used to compose new works. A representative case is the invention of whole tone scale. Debussy invented a scale with less tonality by applying laras slendro, a Javanese scale, to the structure of tonal scale in European music. Asking if making new works through the structural manipulation can be realized by a machine leads us to inquire into the essence of human creativity. In this research, we take music as a testbed, since it is well known that pieces of music have structures at various levels such as musical forms, tonality, chord, rhythm, and we expect the structural extraction and manipulation can correspond to machine learning. Let us consider deep learning as the machine for structural extraction. Deep learning for image recognition produced a hierarchical structure of features extracted at each layer (Le et al., 2012). We can design a deep learning machine where various structures in musical works are extracted and divided into multiple layers, by corresponding “features” extracted here to “structure” in our consideration of cultural creativity. Structural manipulation can be expressed by combining or exchanging layers among machines learning the musical structures. All the processing described here can be formalized and finally can be represented by one machine (algorithm). This means that structural manipulation as the characteristic of human cultural activity can be realized by an algorithm using deep learning as its core mechanism. We will further be able to obtain some clues to understand the mechanism of creating new structures through manipulating existing structures by deeper investigation of the behavior of such algorithm.

 

Evidence has suggested potential cognitive skills training of extensive video-game playing, especially in eye-hand coordination and reaction time, spatial attention, divided visual attention, selective attention and attentional capacity, but the effective in multitasking ability is unclear. As the dramatic development of computer and internet, online-game playing has become a common entertainment in the current generation. Online-game players often do several tasks at the same time; often tasks interfere with each other and might increase mistakes. This study proposed to explore the relationships between online-game playing types and multitasking ability in a virtual environment, using Edinburgh Virtual Errands Test (EVET). In this study, 79 participants with mean aged from 20-30 years old were recruited. Chen’s Internet Addiction Scale (CIAS), internet use questionnaire, EVET, working memory tests and resting fMRI were given to each participant. The results showed a positively association between multitasking ability and working memory (WM). No significant difference of spent time between MOBA and OGPs, showing both groups could be expertise in online-game playing. Three groups with varied online-game playing, multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), other online-game players (OGPs) and no-players (NGPs) were compared with their EVET performance, WM and time spent of online-game use. The MOBA players had better performance on EVET plan follow and total score, and spatial memory than did other two groups, indicating a benefit of MOBA on planning following and increase the efficiency of multitasking. Using Cohe-ReHo analysis of resting fMRI showed significant association between both sides of temporal lobe, caudate, occipital lobe, anterior cingulate cortex and parahippocampus and EVET. In conclusions, online-game playing may provide a role in training multitasking and helps to maintain the planning. Multiplayers online game genres may benefit in participants’ spatial memory. Several brain function activities were found, indicating collaboration among multiple brain areas involving in multitasking performance.

 

Both itch and pain are nociceptive sensations, but their interaction is unclear. In most literature, pain is suggested to inhibit itchy sensation, but it remains unclear whether the interaction between these two nociceptive sensations depends on the modality. To date, a few studies have documented this interaction but the majority of studies used different methods to evoke pain and itch. In the current study, we use electrical stimulation to elicit pain and itch and investigate their cognitive interaction. Our preliminary data showed that the degree of electrically induced itch did not differ under painful or non-painful stimulation, indicating that no significant interaction developed when both kinds of sensations were produced with the identical modality. Results obtained from this study will enhance our understanding about how human brain processes both kinds of nociceptive stimuli.

 

This study aims to investigate the characteristics of effective interaction between a therapist and his/her child client with autism spectrum disorder during a session of pediatric occupational therapy. Pediatric occupational therapy, particularly with a focus on sensory integration theory, has been created to treat children with developmental disorders. The findings from quantitative empirical research that investigates the child-therapist interaction in effective treatment could be applied to clinical practice, as well as to training programs for novice therapists. A session between a child and a therapist, who had abundant experience as an occupational therapist, was video-recorded and analyzed. The child with autism spectrum disorder in this study was not able to take part in everyday conversations. The previous study that analyzed child’s behaviors during the session reported that child’s active involvement and adaptive behaviors toward the therapist increased across time. The present study analyzed therapist’s nonverbal behaviors such as direction of eye gaze, facial expression and vocalization, in order to investigate the characteristics of therapist’s communication which supported occurrence of child’s proactive involvement and adaptive behaviors. The videos of the session was viewed using annotation software (ELAN). We discuss the implication of the use of nonverbal communication during pediatric occupational therapy.