Popular psychological tests and self-fulfilling prophecy: An experiment of Japanese female undergraduate students

The purpose of this study was to examine whether or not the feedback of the results of popular psychological tests influences human behavior, and to compare the strength of any influence with that of academic psychological tests. We conducted an experiment in which 64 female Japanese subjects took a popular or academic psychological test, and then interacted with a stranger. The subjects who took each test received bogus feedback implying that they were extroverted or introverted. The results showed that subjects who received the extroversion feedback were more interactive with a stranger than those who received the introversion feedback, irrespective of whether they had taken the popular or academic test. This suggests that the feedback of popular psychological tests, like that of academic tests, can influence human behavior and create a self-fulfilling prophecy. The results also showed that those subjects who took the popular psychological tests reported higher psychological well-being than those who took the academic tests.     

The aggression test as a taxonomic tool: Evaluation in sympatric and allopatric populations of wood-ant species

Ant-workers of Formica lugubris and F. rufa from colonies living sympatrically (from the same area) and allopatrically (from different areas) were tested in pairs using a laboratory aggression test. The aim was to verify whether sharing the same area of origin influences the relationships among heteroeolonials between and within these species which belong to the F. rufa group. The results suggest that a similar degree of agonistic behaviour (ritualised aggression) was shown in sympatric and allopatric conspecific dyads of both species studied. The interactions between F. lugubris and F. rufa were characterised by a low level of overt aggression both in sympatric and allopatric pairs, confirming the interspecific tolerance observed in our previous studies on these wood-ant species. This reduced aggressiveness between workers of F. lugubris and F. rufa coming from the same or a different area can be interpreted on the basis of their sharing common signals, such as odours and patterns of behaviour. Therefore, their mutual tolerance and acceptance can be indicative of a phylogenetic closeness between such species. We propose that an aggression test can be a valid tool for elucidating systematic problems in this taxonomically difficult group of ants. © 1993 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Hand preference consistency and eye-hand coordination in young children during a motor task

Indications of earlier research are that individuals exhibiting a consistent hand preference are better coordinated on selected motor tasks than peers with inconsistent hand preference. The present study examined eye-hand coordination via inter- and intramodal matching behavior by handedness groups for 55 5- and 6-yr.-olds using the Pinboard Test. Analysis indicated the Consistent group scored better, leading to the speculation that children with consistent laterality may possess an advantage in interhemispheric communication, especially when the task requires coordination of both limbs.     

Projecting two words with one machine: Presenting two different visual stimuli using just one projector without viewers’ noticing the duality

A new method, named the fMORI technique, for presenting two different visual stimuli using just one video projector without the viewers' noticing the duality is introduced along with several sample applications of this presentation method. The LCD projectors available now have three color LCD panels aligned differently in terms of their polarization, polarizing differently the green and magenta (red plus blue) components of its emitting image. Therefore, two visual stimuli either in green or in magenta projected on thesame screen canbe observed separately by subjects wearing an appropriate polarizing filter. This is a variation of the MORI technique (Mori, 2003, 2007b) but it requires only one video projector rather than two. Full-color movies cannot be presented with the fMORI technique, but it may be utilized in various research areas in which only static monochrome visual stimuli, such as words or numbers, are used.     

Asymmetrical drawing patterns on the temples by left-handers

Twenty-three Japanese genuine left-handers were selected by a Laterality Quotient scale and asked to draw the letter S on their own temples and foreheads. The way they drew on the temples showed an asymmetry that was the mirror reversal of that of right-handers, as found in a previous study. Left-handers drew a reversed letter S on their right temple much more often than on the left temple, whereas right-handers drew them in reverse more often on the left temple. They also drew it in reverse on the forehead irrespective of their handedness.     

Effects of temperature and electron energy on the electron-irradiation-induced decomposition of sapphire

The effects of temperature and electron energy on the electron-irradiation-induced decomposition of sapphire have been investigated by in situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM). It was found that the decomposition rate of α-Al₂O₃ increased with increasing irradiation temperature and decreased with increasing acceleration voltage. The core-hole Auger decay process (K–F model), rather than knock-on displacement, is responsible for the decomposition of α-Al₂O₃ under electron irradiation.     

Retention and thermal desorption of helium in amorphous and crystalline FeBSi alloys

Helium retention in metals is related to their atomic structure and the type of defects they contain. In order to investigate the dependence of helium retention on structure, amorphous Fe₇₉B₁₆Si₅ and crystalline FeBSi alloys were irradiated by helium ions at room temperature. In the crystalline alloy irradiated with 5 keV He⁺ ions, three types of helium trapping sites were found: surface defects produced by the irradiation, interstitial-type dislocation loops, and voids. Although these defects did not exist in the amorphous FeBSi alloy, we did observe thermal desorption peaks related to all three types. In addition, helium was released during the crystallization of amorphous FeBSi that had been irradiated by He⁺ ions.     

Stability of the F2-(Al-Pd-Mn) phase

The stability of the F2-(Al-Pd-Mn) phase has been studied by in-situ neutron diffraction on a single quasicrystal with composition Al_69.8Pd_21.4Mn_8.8. We find that the F2 phase is not stable and corresponds to a transient state in the process of the transformation of the icosahedral phase to the F2_M phase. The icosahedral-to-F2_Mphase transition occurs at around 715^oC. In the F2 phase a large amount of diffuse scattering is located close to the icosahedral Bragg reflection in place of the S ₁ superstructure reflections characteristic of the F2_m phase.     

Pure agraphia in Romaji after left inferior frontal gyrus infarction: A case of selective deficit in syllable-to-grapheme conversion in Japanese

The Japanese writing system employs two distinct categories of characters: Kana and Kanji. The difference between Kana and Kanji writing corresponds roughly to that between phonological and lexical systems in Western languages. When typing, most Japanese use alphabetical characters based purely on phonological rules. In particular, the Romaji system is used, in which a syllable consists of a single vowel, a consonant–vowel compound (e.g., ka, ki), or a sequence of consonant–y(semivowel)–vowel (e.g., kya, kyu). We describe a right-handed Japanese patient who developed pure agraphia that affected Romaji writing but preserved Kana and Kanji writing and who had a lesion in the left pars opercularis of the inferior frontal gyrus that extended to the anterior precentral gyrus. The patient demonstrated literal paragraphia in spelling Romaji across modalities. Our findings suggested that the patient’s agraphia in Romaji after a confined left frontal infarction was manifested by a selective impairment in syllable-to-grapheme conversion.     

Unraveling the linguistic nature of specific autobiographical memories using a computerized classification algorithm

In the present study, we explored the linguistic nature of specific memories generated with the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT) by developing a computerized classifier that distinguishes between specific and nonspecific memories. The AMT is regarded as one of the most important assessment tools to study memory dysfunctions (e.g., difficulty recalling the specific details of memories) in psychopathology. In Study 1, we utilized the Japanese corpus data of 12,400 cue-recalled memories tagged with observer-rated specificity. We extracted linguistic features of particular relevance to memory specificity, such as past tense, negation, and adverbial words and phrases pertaining to time and location. On the basis of these features, a support vector machine (SVM) was trained to classify the memories into specific and nonspecific categories, which achieved an area under the curve (AUC) of .92 in a performance test. In Study 2, the trained SVM was tested in terms of its robustness in classifying novel memories (n?= 8,478) that were retrieved in response to cue words that were different from those used in Study 1. The SVM showed an AUC of .89 in classifying the new memories. In Study 3, we extended the binary SVM to a five-class classification of the AMT, which achieved 64%–65% classification accuracy, against the chance level (20%) in the performance tests. Our data suggest that memory specificity can be identified with a relatively small number of words, capturing the universal linguistic features of memory specificity across memories in diverse contents.