Changes in Families’ Caregiving Experiences through Involvement as Participants then Facilitators in a Family Peer‐Education Program for Mental Disorders in Japan

A family peer‐education program for mental disorders was developed in Japan, similar to existing programs in the United States and Hong Kong. Families that serve as facilitators in such programs may enhance their caregiving processes and, thereby, their well‐being. This study's aim was to describe how families’ caregiving experiences change, beginning with the onset of a family member's mental illness, through their involvement in a family group or peer‐education program as participants then facilitators. Thus, this study was conducted in a family peer‐education program for mental disorders in Japan. Group interviews were conducted with 27 facilitators from seven program sites about their experiences before, during, and after becoming facilitators. Interview data were coded and categorized into five stages of caregiving processes: (1) withdrawing and suppressing negative experiences with difficulty and regret; (2) finding comfort through being listened to about negative experiences; (3) supporting participants’ sharing as facilitators; (4) understanding and affirming oneself through repeated sharing of experiences; and (5) finding value and social roles in one's experiences. The third, fourth, and fifth stages were experienced by the facilitators. The value that the facilitators placed on their caregiving experiences changed from negative to positive, which participants regarded as helpful and supportive. We conclude that serving as facilitators may improve families’ caregiving processes.     

Subjective Happiness and Emotional Responsiveness to Food Stimuli

Through three studies, this study aims to investigate the relationship between subjective happiness and responsiveness to eating and to foods. In Study 1, 299 Japanese undergraduates completed the Japanese subjective happiness scale and self-report questionnaires for attitudes toward eating and food. Study 1 revealed that in daily life, people with higher happiness levels show a stronger tendency to feel pleasure by eating than those with lower happiness levels. In Study 2, 26 Japanese undergraduates performed impression assessments for foods when looking at pictures of them. In Study 3, 22 Japanese undergraduates performed the same assessments when looking at real foods and eating them using a comparison with the data from pictures of non-food items as a control condition. The results of the study indicate that people with higher happiness levels show a stronger emotional response (happy and glad) to food stimuli than those with lower happiness levels. Even images of food were effective. No such group differences were observed for appetitive responses. It was also shown that emotional responses to the pictures of non-food items’ condition in the two groups did not differ. The present studies provided empirical evidence that subjective happiness has relevance to daily eating behavior and attitudes. Further studies should investigate the possibility that subjective happiness is related to a wide range of behavior and cognition in our daily life.     

Control of a virtual vehicle influences postural activity and motion sickness

Everyday experience suggests that drivers are less susceptible to motion sickness than passengers. In the context of inertial motion (i.e., physical displacement), this effect has been confirmed in laboratory research using whole body motion devices. We asked whether a similar effect would occur in the context of simulated vehicles in a visual virtual environment. We used a yoked control design in which one member of each pair of participants played a driving video game (i.e., drove a virtual automobile). A recording of that performance was viewed (in a separate session) by the other member of the pair. Thus, the two members of each pair were exposed to identical visual motion stimuli, but the risk of behavioral contagion was minimized. Participants who drove the virtual vehicle (drivers) were less likely to report motion sickness than participants who viewed game recordings (passengers). Data on head and torso movement revealed that drivers tended to move more than passengers, and that the movements of drivers were more predictable than the movements of passengers. Before the onset of subjective symptoms of motion sickness movement differed between participants who (later) reported motion sickness and those who did not, consistent with a prediction of the postural instability theory of motion sickness. The results confirm that control is an important factor in the etiology of motion sickness and extend this finding to the control of noninertial virtual vehicles.     

Changes in background impair fluency-triggered positive affect: a cross-cultural test using a mere-exposure paradigm

This study examined whether repeated exposure would enhance positive evaluations when only a part of a stimulus (e.g., the central object) was identical to a previously presented stimulus. Japanese and American participants were exposed to photographs of animals with scenery, then asked their preferences for each of four types of photographs of animals (photographs of animals with the original scenery, photographs of animals without scenery, photographs of animals with novel scenery, and photographs of animals not depicted previously). Finally, their recognition of the animals presented in the exposure phase was tested. Members of both groups showed the mere-exposure effect for the first two types of stimuli, irrespective of stimulus recognition accuracy, whereas this effect was not observed for animals presented with novel scenery. This suggests that changes in background impair positive affect as a result of repeated exposure.     

Negative support of significant others affects psychological adjustment in breast cancer patients

Significant others play an important role in providing support in patients' lives, but some types of support negatively affect the patients. This study was conducted in early-stage breast cancer patients to examine the structure of support, which was provided by their significant others and assessed negatively by the patients, and to identify negative support relating to the psychological adjustment of these patients. Thus, we first conducted interviews among 28 breast cancer patients to identify these support items assessed as negative; next, we conducted a questionnaire survey using the resulting items in 109 postoperative patients who had early-stage breast cancer. We performed exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and obtained a valid second-order factor structure, including superordinate factors (excessive engagement, avoidance of problems and underestimation) and subordinate factors (overprotection, encouragement and management). Among these factors, the avoidance of problems was the only factor to be negatively associated with psychological adjustment of the patients, suggesting that these patients receive problem-avoiding support. The results of our study suggest that such problem-avoiding support from significant others can be counter-productive and potentially worsen the psychological adjustment of breast cancer patients.     

Misery loves company: when sadness increases the desire for social connectedness

In three experiments, the authors investigated the effects of sadness on the desire for social connectedness. They hypothesized that sadness serves an adaptive function by motivating people to reach out to others and preferentially attend to information related to one's current level of social connectedness, but only when it is instigated by social loss. Consistent with this hypothesis, the authors observed that sadness induced by an emotional depiction of social loss enhanced (a) attention to nonverbal cues, an important source of information concerning an individual's current level of social connectedness (Experiment 1), and (b) the desire to engage in social behaviors (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3 the authors found that sadness that results from imagined social loss uniquely produced this pattern of effects. Sadness that resulted from imagined failure had different effects on motivation and no effect on sensitivity to nonverbal cues. These results support and refine functional explanations for the universality of sadness.     

Overcoming cognitive obstacles in learning fractions: Equal‐partitioning and equal‐whole1

Abstract: The present study was designed to test the hypothesis that acquisition of the concepts of equal‐partitioning and equal‐whole, which constitute implicit knowledge in fractions, promotes understanding of fractions. To test the hypothesis an experimental program based on both the equal‐partitioning and equal‐whole was developed for three third‐grade classrooms in a Japanese elementary school. As a control, conventional teaching based on a Japanese textbook was provided in two third‐grade classrooms. The present study tested the hypothesis that students given such an intervention program would understand order and magnitude as central characteristics of fractions better than those who had been instructed using a traditional textbook. Students in the experimental group showed significantly better understanding of the equal‐partitioning of fractions and the representation of the sizes of fractions than did those in the textbook group. There were, moreover, no differences between the experimental and textbook groups in the performance of routine tasks frequently found in the textbook. These results are discussed in view of the important instructional aims of having students understand fractions.     

Visual dominance in amending the directional parameter of feedforward control

The authors examined visual dominance between trials in which the movement program was amended (i.e., off-line processing). Weighting between visual and proprioceptive feedback was examined in a trial-by-trial analysis of the directional parameter of feedforward control. Eight participants moved a cursor to a target displayed on a computer screen by manipulating a hand-held stylus on a digitizing tablet. In the first 30 trials, the cursor followed the stylus movement (practice condition). In the next 30 trials, the directional error of the stylus movement was presented in the opposite direction (reversal condition). Subjects knew the presence and the nature of the reversal. In the last 10 trials, the reversal was withdrawn (transfer condition). Directional error of feedforward control was relatively small in the practice condition, and it increased gradually in 1 of 2 directions as trials proceeded in the reversal condition. Positive aftereffect was observed in the transfer condition. A constant increment of the directional error indicated that both visual and proprioceptive feedback are registered, with higher weight on vision, and that weighting between those inputs is determined automatically or is fixed without any strategic control.