Development of single/geminate obstruent discrimination by Japanese infants: early integration of durational and nondurational cues

The Japanese language has single/geminate obstruents characterized by durational difference in closure/frication as part of the phonemic repertoire used to distinguish word meanings. We first evaluated infants' abilities to discriminate naturally uttered single/geminate obstruents (/pata/ and /patta/) using the visual habituation-dishabituation method. The results revealed that 9.5-month-old Japanese infants were able to make this discrimination, t(21) = 2.119, p = .046, paired t test, whereas 4-month-olds were not, t(25) = 0.395, p = .696, paired t test. To examine how acoustic correlates (covarying cues) are associated with the contrast discrimination, we tested Japanese infants at 9.5 and 11.5 months of age with 3 combinations of natural and manipulated stimuli. The 11.5-month-olds were able to discriminate the naturally uttered pair (/pata/ vs. /patta/), t(20) = 4.680, p < .000, paired t test. Neither group discriminated the natural /patta/ from the manipulated /pata/ created from natural /patta/ tokens: For 9.5-month-olds, t(23) = 0.754, p = .458; for 11.5-month-olds, t(27) = 0.789, p = .437, paired t tests. Only the 11.5-month-olds discriminated the natural /pata/ and the manipulated /patta/ created from /pata/ tokens: For 9.5-month-olds, t(24) = 0.114, p = .910; for 11.5-month-olds, t(23) = 2.244, p = .035, paired t tests. These results suggest that Japanese infants acquire a sensitivity to contrasts of single/geminate obstruents by 9.5 months of age and that certain cues that covary with closure length either facilitate or interfere with contrast discrimination under particular conditions.     

Development of the Coping Flexibility Scale: evidence for the coping flexibility hypothesis

Coping flexibility was defined as the ability to discontinue an ineffective coping strategy (i.e., evaluation coping) and produce and implement an alternative coping strategy (i.e., adaptive coping). The Coping Flexibility Scale (CFS) was developed on the basis of this definition. Five studies involving approximately 4,400 Japanese college students and employees were conducted to test the hypothesis that flexible coping produces more adaptive outcomes. Studies 1, 2, and 3 provided evidence of the reliability of the CFS scores as well as of its convergent and discriminant validity for Japanese samples. Study 4 further demonstrated that flexible coping was positively associated with improved psychological health, including reduced depression, anxiety, and distress. In Study 5, coping flexibility as measured by the CFS was associated with reduced future depression, even after controlling for the effects of other coping flexibility measures and popular coping strategies. Overall, these results suggest that a valid approach for assessing coping flexibility has been developed and that flexible coping can contribute to psychological health. The implications of these findings for clinical practice are discussed.     

Emotional Salience and the Isolation Effect

When a homogeneous list contains a few items that are different from the rest of the items in the list, these isolated items show enhanced recall compared to the same items in a list where these items are not isolated. This phenomenon, known as the isolation effect, has been explained on the basis of isolated items eliciting salience. In this experiment, negative pictures and neutral pictures were isolated at the early and late part of the list. The salience explanation would predict that participants would pay more attention to these isolated items resulting in higher judgments of learning (JOL) ratings compared to the same items in the control list. Negative pictures showed the isolation effect for both early and late isolation; however, for early isolation, JOL was similar between the isolated and non-isolated pictures indicating that the emotional isolation effect does not require emotional salience.     

Neuropsychological profile in patients with schizotypal personality disorder or schizophrenia

Neuropsychological impairments have been consistently reported in patients with schizophrenia. As little is known whether subjects with schizotypal personality disorder exhibit neurocognitive dysfunction similar to that in schizophrenia, we assessed the neuropsychological profile of 15 subjects with schizotypal personality disorder and compared it with that for 15 patients with schizophrenia and for 15 psychiatrically normal volunteers. All participants were administered a standard neuropsychological battery assessing language ability, spatial ability, visuomotor function, verbal memory, visual memory, auditory attention, visual attention, and executive function. Performance on most of the cognitive domains was impaired in patients with schizotypal personality disorder but less than patients with schizophrenia. Specifically, impairment in verbal memory and visuomotor ability in patients with schizotypal personality disorder and patients with schizophrenia were comparable, while patients with schizophrenia performed worse on the test of executive function than did patients with schizotypal personality disorder. As a whole, cognitive deficits in patients with schizotypal personality disorder were qualitatively similar to, but quantitatively milder than, those for patients with schizophrenia. The results suggest that cognitive abilities related to frontotemporal lobe function are disturbed across these schizophrenia-spectrum disorders.     

Deterioration of planning ability with age in Japanese monkeys (Macaca fuscata)

To investigate the ability of aged monkeys to plan and the effect of aging on this ability, performance in a food retrieval task was assessed in aged and younger Japanese monkeys (Macaca fuscata). In this task, the monkeys had to retrieve food items by selecting from a set of 9 holes, each of which contained 1 food item. Results showed that task performance declined significantly with age. All monkeys showed, to a greater or lesser extent, some consistent patterns in their sequence of selecting holes for retrieving the food item. An analysis of these selection patterns indicated that the younger monkeys showed more consistent sequences in selection than the aged monkeys. Furthermore, success in the task performance correlated strongly with higher consistency in the sequence of selecting holes. The authors simulated performance for this task by monkeys without any strategies or plans. The results suggest that the empirical data were far more systematic than the simulated data. Thus, the authors conclude that Japanese monkeys have the ability to plan and that this ability to plan deteriorates with age.     

Visual search strategies of baseball batters: eye movements during the preparatory phase of batting

The aim of this study was to analyze visual search strategies of baseball batters during the viewing period of the pitcher's motion. The 18 subjects were 9 experts and 9 novices. While subjects viewed a videotape which, from a right-handed batter's perspective, showed a pitcher throwing a series of 10 types of pitches, their eye movements were measured and analyzed. Novices moved their eyes faster than experts, and the distribution area of viewing points was also wider than that of the experts. The viewing duration of experts of the pitching arm was longer than those of novices during the last two pitching phases. These results indicate that experts set their visual pivot on the pitcher's elbow and used peripheral vision properties to evaluate the pitcher's motion and the ball trajectory.     

Contribution of concept recall to brand loyalty: An empirical analysis of design and performance

With industries becoming technologically advanced, the source of competitiveness has shifted from a functional value, such as performance and durability, to an emotional value, such as design and comfort. To create an emotional value, the concept of a brand should be consistently embodied in a product or service to enhance its appeal. In the brand management of products and services, although performance and design are surveyed as factors of the repurchase or recommendation intention, the concept remains unused. This study hypothesized that “considering reasons behind the repurchase intention of products/services, consumers who recall the concept of the product are more likely to repurchase than consumers who recall the specific characteristics, such as design and performance.” The target products included Apple MacBook Pro, Dyson Canister Vacuum Cleaner, and Nintendo Switch, and services included Facebook, Starbucks, and Disney. The multiple regression results show that concept contributed more than design, comfort, performance, price, and word of mouth. Therefore, the proposed hypothesis was supported. As a practical implication, a new index known as concept recall can be adopted as a factor of brand loyalty in brand management. Although the index is simple, few studies have claimed the effectiveness of the indicator based on scientific grounds. Empathy, along with the concept, is paramount in acquiring consumer brand loyalty; design/UX is merely a means to embody the concept. The proposed index should be the basis of decision-making and should not turn into “a means to an end.”     

Conditioning of the microcirculation in the rat

The serotonin-catecholamine balancing mechanism maintains normal vascular tonus and permeability of the microcirculation. Serotonin provokes local vasodilatation and increases capillary permeability in the skin of rats. Released or injected catecholamines inhibit the serotonin-induced peripheral hemodynamic alterations. Following eleotroconvulsive treatment (ECT) (US), there is a catecholamine release and the microcirculatory response to serotonin does not occur. When the administration of a visual stimulus (in six consecutive occasions) proceedingly coincided with the administration of the ECT, it was noted that the light became an effective stimulus for this system. Light alone is an indifferent stimulus to catecholamine release. Thus, the inhibition of the serotonin-induced vasodilatation by ECT (via catecholamine release) became conditioned to the visual-conditional stimulus. Since the net effect of extrinsic serotonin depends on free catecholamines at the vascular bed, the intensity of the serotonin-induced vascular response reflects alterations in the chemical balancing mechanism. This mechanism can be conditioned with the present technique. The result indicates that there is central nervous system mediation.