The Use of Lexical Prosody for Lexical Access of the Japanese Language

It has been suggested that English listeners do not use lexical prosody for lexical access in word recognition. The present study was designed to examine whether this argument could be generalized to the Japanese language. Two experiments using a cross-modal priming task were conducted. The participants made a lexical decision regarding a visual target following an auditory prime that was either the prosodically congruent or incongruent homophone of the target. In experiment 1, the primes were presented as complete words, and in experiment 2, they were presented as word fragments. In both experiments, the priming effects were observed only in the congruent condition. These results suggest that the prime activated only the representations of prosodically congruent words. We therefore concluded that Japanese listeners use lexical prosody for lexical access of their language and that the role of lexical prosody is determined language-specifically.     

Where Grammar and Interaction Meet: A Study of Co-Participant Completion in Japanese Conversation

This article examines the practice of "co-participant completion" in Japanese conversation, and explores what kinds of resources are mobilized to provide the opportunity to complete another participant's utterance-in-progress. It suggests the following observations as potential characteristics of Japanese co-participant completion: (i) Syntactically-defined two-part formats (e.g. [If X] + [then Y]) may not play as prominent a role as in English; (ii) The majority of cases of co-participant completion take the form of 'terminal item completion;' (iii) Locally emergent structures like 'contrast' and 'list' as well as 'unprojected' features of turn construction often play an important role in enhancing the opportunity for completing another participant's utterance-in-progress. The article then discusses the implications of these findings for the investigation of the mutual bearing of grammar and social interaction. In particular, the discussion focuses on what we can learn from the practice of co-participant completion about how projection of turn-shapes is accomplished in Japanese conversation.     

Double response to Stroop stimuli.

To reexamine Klein's 1964 findings we carried out two experiments on the double response made to Stroop stimuli. In Exp. 1 incongruent color-word stimuli were presented on a CRT online with a microcomputer. A color-word card was used in Exp. 2. Subjects were asked to read words before naming colors or, conversely, to name colors before reading words. An analysis of variance (the task x the type of task) was performed on response times in both experiments. Two main effects and interactions were nonsignificant. Some subjects made an error-like reverse-order response on the double-response task. The present findings do not support Klein's findings or the competition explanation of the Stroop effect.     

Amnesic effect of cycloheximide in the mouse mediated by adrenocortical hormones.

The involvement of adrenocortical hormones in the amnesic effect of cycloheximide was examined in mice. Subcutaneous injection of cycloheximide shortly before a training trial of a passive avoidance task resulted in an amnesia of the avoidance response. However, amnesia was absent in the adrenalectomized animals in which cerebral protein synthesis was suppressed by cycloheximide. Injection of corticosteroids antagonized the amnesic effect, most effecively if the steroids were given immediately after training. The influence of the hormonal treatments upon the amnesic effect was not ascribable to a change in general activity level. The amnesic effect of subcutaneously injected cycloheximide appears to be mediated by hormonal deficiency, and not related to suppression of the cerebral protein synthesis.     

Removal of an obstacle: Problem-solving behavior in pigeons

The importance of a subject's personal history in the solution of an obstruction problem was demonstrated with pigeons. Four birds were trained to peck a key located outside the chamber by poking their heads through an opening in a screen. During tests, a white block was placed in front of the opening, so that it was not possible to peck the key without removing the block. All birds failed to remove the block. However, all birds that were subsequently trained to push the white block around the chamber in the absence of the key and a few of the birds trained similarly but with a black block solved the problem by pushing the block aside and pecking the key. One bird showed the abrupt descent in the learning curve that has been considered a characteristic of “insightful” problem solving. All birds maintained their successful performance after a 1-month interval with no intervening tests.     

The influence of Japanese mothers' styles of emotional expression on thirteen-month-old infants' reactions to a stranger

The present study investigated the hypothesized influence of mothers' styles of emotional expression on infants' responses to the stranger in Episode 3, the Ainsworth Strange Situation. One hundred and thirty-five mothers volunteered for this experiment with their 13-month-olds. The mothers' answers on an expression style questionnaire (EESQ) were factor analysed. According to their mothers' factor scores, infants were divided into four groups, those having (a) expressive type mothers (N = 40), (b) suppressive type mothers (N = 39), (c) positive expressive type mothers (N = 31), and (d) negative expressive type mothers (N = 25). The infants' behaviours were analysed in 5-sec intervals. The infants having expressive type mothers showed a strong interest in the stranger and interacted with her willingly. The infants having suppressive type mothers exhibited less smiling and much freezing behaviour. The infants having positive expressive type mothers reacted with more smiling, much bodily contact behaviour with the mother and less crying. The infants having negative expressive type mothers showed more often crying and frequent head orientation towards the stranger.     

Autokinetic movement and inverted vision

It was considered that inverted vision could influence the condition of the subject's relative framework. The aim of this study was to investigate whether autokinetic movement observed during inverted vision might differ from that in normal vision. One subject wearing inverting spectacles and another one subject in normal vision observed autokinetic movement for five days. The results showed that directional changes increased with the time spent in visual inversion, while in normal vision such tendency was not observed. One speculative interpretation was suggested in terms of subject-related framework.     

Context-dependent olfactory learning monitored by activities of salivary neurons in cockroaches

Context-dependent discrimination learning, a sophisticated form of nonelemental associative learning, has been found in many animals, including insects. The major purpose of this research is to establish a method for monitoring this form of nonelemental learning in rigidly restrained insects for investigation of underlying neural mechanisms. We report context-dependent olfactory learning (occasion-setting problem solving) of salivation, which can be monitored as activity changes of salivary neurons in immobilized cockroaches, Periplaneta americana. A group of cockroaches was trained to associate peppermint odor (conditioned stimulus, CS) with sucrose solution reward (unconditioned stimulus, US) while vanilla odor was presented alone without pairing with the US under a flickering light condition (1.0 Hz) and also trained to associate vanilla odor with sucrose reward while peppermint odor was presented alone under a steady light condition. After training, the responses of salivary neurons to the rewarded peppermint odor were significantly greater than those to the unrewarded vanilla odor under steady illumination and those to the rewarded vanilla odor was significantly greater than those to the unrewarded peppermint odor in the presence of flickering light. Similar context-dependent responses were observed in another group of cockroaches trained with the opposite stimulus arrangement. This study demonstrates context-dependent olfactory learning of salivation for the first time in any vertebrate and invertebrate species, which can be monitored by activity changes of salivary neurons in restrained cockroaches.