Perception of the end position of a limb loaded with a weight

We examined the effect of loading a weight on the perception of the end position of the limb. The participants haptically perceived where the end of their limb was located while they swung the limb or statically held it. The results showed that the loading of a weight influenced participants' perception only when they swung the limb; when the weight was attached to a participant's hand, the position was perceived to be farther from the body than when the weight was attached to the forearm or no weight was attached. We also found that the end position was generally underestimated when the participants swung their limb. On the other hand, when the participants statically held their limb, the perceived position was not affected by the loading of the weight and was rather precise. These results suggest that the perceptual system for limb end position is sensitive to changes in the surrounding haptic information caused by moving the limb.     

Temporal characteristics of the effects of visual pattern redundancy on encoding and storage processes: evidence from rapid serial visual presentation

Pattern redundancy is a key concept for representing the amount of internal mental load (encoding efficiency) needed for pattern perception/recognition. The present study investigated how pattern redundancy influences encoding and memory processes in the visual system using a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm. With RSVP, it is well known that participants often fail to detect repetitions of words (repetition blindness, RB). We used this phenomenon as an index of the encoding and storage of visual patterns. In three experiments, we presented patterns with higher and lower redundancy, as defined by Garner’s equivalent set size (ESS). The results showed that RB occurred more frequently for higher redundancy patterns when the temporal distance between the targets was less than 500 ms; this tendency was reversed with longer temporal distances of over 500 ms. Our results suggest that pattern redundancy modulates both the early encoding and subsequent memory processes of a representation.     

With or Without Empathy: Primary Psychopathy and Difficulty in Identifying Feelings Predict Utilitarian Judgment in Sacrificial Dilemmas

Drawing from research on moral judgment and affective dysfunction, we examined how trait psychopathy and alexithymia, which are characterized as empathic deficits, relate to utilitarian moral judgments in sacrificial dilemmas. As predicted, primary and secondary psychopathy traits and alexithymia were associated with reduced empathic concern. However, primary psychopathy and difficulty identifying feelings (one of three alexithymia traits), but not secondary psychopathy and other two alexithymia traits, were associated with utilitarian judgments. Moreover, hierarchical regression analysis showed that primary psychopathy, difficulty identifying feelings, and empathic concern made unique contributions to the prediction of direct harm on the victim, whereas alexithymia traits made weaker contributions. Although the lack of affective empathy is found in psychopathy and alexithymia, the process through which the two traits lead to utilitarian judgment in sacrificial dilemmas may be distinct. The present findings add to the growing literature, contributing to a fuller picture of the relationship between empathy, trait psychopathy, and alexithymia.     

Analyses of facial attractiveness on feminised and juvenilised faces

We conducted two experiments to investigate the psychological factors affecting the attractiveness of composite faces. Feminised or juvenilised Japanese faces were created by morphing between average male and female adult faces or between average male (female) adult and boy (girl) faces. In experiment 1, we asked the participants to rank the attractiveness of these faces. The results showed moderately juvenilised faces to be highly attractive. In experiment 2, we analysed the impressions the participants had of the composite faces by the semantic-differential method and determined the factors that largely affected attractiveness. On the basis of the factor scores, we plotted the faces in factor spaces and analysed the locations of attractive faces. We found that most of the attractive juvenilised faces involved impressions corresponding to an augmentation of femininity, characterised by the factors of 'elegance', 'mildness', and 'youthfulness', which the attractive faces potentially had.     

Analyzing the aesthetic impressions of alexithymic Japanese students

We investigated the association between alexithymic tendencies as measured by the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale and the characteristics of aesthetic impressions for words and drawings. Impressions were measured using the semantic differential technique in three groups of Japanese students (High scores n = 31, Moderate scores n = 40, and a Control group n = 182) who were presented only words (Word condition), only drawings (Drawing condition), or pairs comprising one word plus one drawing that represented the same emotional categories (Drawing/Word condition). In a factor analysis on the data from participants, three factors (Evaluation, Activity, and Potency) were extracted. Based on the factor scores, the distances among the three conditions were calculated for each of the groups. For Potency, significant group differences were found between the Drawing/Word and other conditions. In the High-scoring alexithymia group, in particular, the Potency impressions based on tactile sensation, e.g., soft-hard, blunt-sharp, were amplified regardless of stimulus condition. These results are discussed in the context of somatosensory amplification associated with alexithymia and the difficulty of distinguishing between emotion and somatic sensations.     

The Influence of Time Pressure on Mood‐Congruent Effects: Evaluating Products With Limited Information1

This study tested mood effects on product evaluation, varying information type and time pressure. In this experiment, happy or sad moods were induced in participants, then they were asked to evaluate products. The results showed that in the happy mood/non‐time‐pressure condition, a favorable evaluation was seen when complete information was provided compared to incomplete. However, when time pressure was induced, no such difference was observed. On the other hand, in the sad mood/non‐time‐pressure condition, there was no difference in evaluation between complete and incomplete information, but when time pressure was induced, a less favorable evaluation of products was seen under incomplete relative to complete. The results provide support for the process in which participants depend on their mood as a source of information when inferring about missing information under reduced cognitive capacity.     

Priming effects on musical chord identification: Facilitation or disruption?

The present study examined whether priming effects on chord identification are facilitative or disruptive, by employing a control (no‐prime) condition in addition to a related‐prime condition and an unrelated‐prime condition. According to the activation hypothesis, which predicts a facilitative effect of musically related chords, responses are expected to be faster in the related‐prime condition than in the control condition. In contrast, according to the schema hypothesis, which supposes a disruptive effect of musically unrelated chords, responses are expected to be slower in the unrelated‐prime condition than in the control condition. No facilitative effect was found in the related‐prime condition, whereas a marked disruptive effect was found in the unrelated‐prime condition. The disruptive effect was more pronounced in the major‐chord condition than in the minor‐chord condition, and more salient at an interonset interval of 1 s than at 3 s or 7 s. These results are interpreted in terms of the schema hypothesis.     

What Makes for a Good Life? A Four-Nation Study

How do we assess the value of our lives? What makes the life we live a good or worthy one in our own eyes? What are its aims? The answers to these questions are implicit in the often unarticulated commitments by which people define their selves, purposes, and actions. These commitments structure the moral framework that guides our everyday qualitative distinctions and positions us within a unified narrative of continuity and change. The substantive conception of a good life, we argue, presupposes but is not reducible to a set of basic values. As an initial exploration of cultural variation, Canadian, Chinese, Indian, and Japanese university students were compared on what they held to be most important for assessing the worth of their lives. The results revealed considerable commonality of content with notable differences consistent with the cultural ethos of each group.     

Visual and tactile cross-modal mere exposure effects

The affective system enables people to perceive and judge the emotional content of stimuli from various sensory modalities. Cross-modal interactions in affective processes, however, are less well understood. Using novel three-dimensional objects, we investigated cross-modal mere exposure effects between vision and touch. Previewing objects increased the preference judged by hand, while pre-touching did not modulate the preference judged by vision. Moreover, these effects were found to be independent of recognition performance, suggesting a dissociation between affective and cognitive processing. Our demonstration of a cross-modal mere exposure effect suggests that the affective system integrates inputs from visual and tactile modalities asymmetrically.     

Selective attention to stimulus features modulates interocular suppression

Psychological and neurophysiological studies have shown that attention modulates various sorts of perceptual processing. Here, we report that attention affects the perceptual dominance of binocular rivalry. Experiments using a dichoptic masking paradigm revealed that when an observer was attending to one of the two orientations of the elements of a monocular texture, a texture briefly presented to the opposite eye suppressed the perception of the elements with the attended orientation, while the elements with the orientation which was ignored sustained their dominance. Moreover, subsequent experiments indicated that the suppression depended on the orientation of the texture elements constituting the mask, but was independent of their locations. These results suggest that attention to specific features modulates interocular suppression in a mode which is different from that found in a previous study [Ooi and He, 1999 Perception 28 551 -574].