High risk factors of hostage barricade incidents in a Japanese sample

Hostage taking incidents in which the police besiege a particular location are known as hostage barricade incidents. The first aim of the present article was to examine the process of risk assessment in hostage incidents, using a group of police officers as the sample. The second aim was to identify the risk factors involved in hostage incidents and examine the degree of concordance between the risk as assessed by the police officers and the figures obtained from the analysis of actual hostage barricade incidents. For the purpose of this study, a survey was carried out across Japan, and 45 police officers responsible for hostage negotiation responded to the questionnaires. Additionally, a sample of 116 actual hostage barricade incidents that occurred in Japan from 1970 to 2002 was utilised to examine the high risk factors involved in such cases. As per the results, a majority of the police officers (73.3%), in response to an open‐ended question, indicated that the highly excited state of the hostage takers was dangerous for the hostages. Moreover, it was demonstrated in all 116 incidents that several factors such as ‘a long siege’ tended to increase the risk of deaths, though this was very rare (n = 4). On the other hand, the proportion of injuries to the hostages was high in expressive situations such as domestic situations or suicide attempt scenarios. On the whole, the results obtained from the analyses of actual incidents were consistent with those obtained from the police officers' risk assessment in many respects. However, the correlation between the degree of risk as assessed by the police officers and the actual rate of deaths/injuries to the hostages was very low. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Story-Presenting Method: a Method for Constructing Multiple Viewpoints to Understand Different Cultures

This study will show the results of four dialogical cultural exchange classes, which were held between Japanese and Chinese high school students, and examine the shifts in students’ viewpoints and changes in cultural understandings that occurred during those classes. In the first cultural exchange class, students of both countries read a story which described an older student who carelessly wore a T-shirt inside out, and younger students passed by without greeting him. Students of both countries were then asked to write their comments about it. From the second to the fourth class, students discussed the story with each other through exchanging their comments. By presenting another story, which introduced the viewpoint of a third person, and asking them questions that allowed them to reflect on their lives, students also experienced four different viewpoints during these cultural exchange classes. At the beginning of the cultural exchange, students of both countries tended to focus on the similarities in each other’s comments, which led to the closing down of the discussion. However, through discussions and experiencing the four different viewpoints, they found there are some essential differences between them around ‘ways of greeting’ and ‘hierarchical relationships between older and younger students’, which motivated them to understand their counterparts’ culture. Moreover, in the last comments of these cultural exchange classes, it was found that they acquired the viewpoints of cultural others. Given the results of these classes, it is shown that it is effective to present various stories to stimulate cultural understanding.     

Hippocampal activation of immediate early genes Zenk and c-Fos in zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) during learning and recall of a spatial memory task

Zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) are able to learn the position of food by orienting on spatial cues in a ‘dry water maze’. In the course of spatial learning, the hippocampus shows high expression of the immediate early genes (IEGs) Zenk and c-Fos, indicating high activation of this area during learning. In contrast, the IEG activity is nearly absent if the birds do not have to rely on spatial cues. In the present experiment it was investigated whether hippocampal activation can also be observed if the learned spatial task is recalled. For this purpose, the hippocampal Zenk and c-Fos activation of birds in an early learning stage was compared with that of others having well reached their maximal performance. The results show that the avian hippocampus is also active during recall of a learned spatial task, but the activation is significantly lower than in animals learning actually. As in previous experiments, hippocampal IEG expression showed strong variation not only in the position of the active patches of neurons, but also in size and cell density. The observed difference contributes to the view that immediate early genes may not be indicators of activation alone, but may be due to a combination of activation and plastic changes.     

Preference for and discrimination of videos of conspecific social behavior in mice

We showed mice videos of three conspecific social behaviors, namely sniffing, copulation, and fighting, in pairwise combinations using iPods and evaluated preference as determined by time spent in front of each iPod. Mice preferred the copulation video to the sniffing video, the fighting video to the sniffing video, and the fighting video to the copulation video. In Experiment 1a, we used a single video clip for each social behavior but used multiple video clips for each social behavior in Experiment 2a. Next, we trained mice to discriminate between the fighting and copulation videos using a conditioned-place-preference-like task in which one video was associated with injection of morphine and the other was not. For half of the subjects, the fighting video was associated with morphine injection, and for the other half, the copulation video was associated with morphine injection. After conditioning, the mice stayed longer in the compartment with the morphine-associated video. When tested with still images obtained from the videos, mice stayed longer in the compartment with still images from the video associated with morphine injection (Experiment 1b). When we trained mice with multiple exemplars, the subjects showed generalization of preference for new video clips never shown during conditioning (Experiment 2b). These results demonstrate that mice had a preference among videos of particular behavior patterns and that they could discriminate these videos as visual category. Although relationship between real social behaviors and their videos is still open question, the preference tests suggest that the mice perceived the videos as meaningful stimuli.     

Minimalistic toy robot to analyze a scenery of speaker–listener condition in autism

Atypical neural architecture causes impairment in communication capabilities and reduces the ability of representing the referential statements of other people in children with autism. During a scenery of “speaker–listener” communication, we have analyzed verbal and emotional expressions in neurotypical children (n = 20) and in children with autism (n = 20). The speaker was always a child, and the listener was a human or a minimalistic robot which reacts to speech expression by nodding only. Although both groups performed the task, everything happens as if the robot could allow children with autism to elaborate a multivariate equation encoding and conceptualizing within his/her brain, and externalizing into unconscious emotion (heart rate) and conscious verbal speech (words). Such a behavior would indicate that minimalistic artificial environments such as toy robots could be considered as the root of neuronal organization and reorganization with the potential to improve brain activity.     

Establishing emotional mutuality not formed in infancy with Japanese families

Young mothers in Japan today are faced with a conflict between the traditional image of motherhood and a sometimes lonely life without physical and emotional support from their husbands, family, and community. As a consequence of this, more and more children are becoming emotionally disturbed as a result of poor mother-child interactions that arise as early as infancy. With several cases of poor interaction, hospital treatment was undertaken to establish emotional mutuality between mother and child through therapeutically induced regression into infancy. Each mother-child pair was hospitalized in the baby unit of the pediatric ward, and the mother provided consistent emotional availability to her child. The child then regressed into infantile states that involved the following four phases: (1) The child began to interact with her mother more actively; (2) she became demanding, like a toddler in the rapproachment crisis; (3) the mother's sustained acceptance won the trust of her child, who began to show a strong attachment to her; (4) the child began to progress to a stage appropriate to her age and used the mother as a secure home base. Each child lost previous symptoms and acquired a stable character. This approach, which utilized the Japanese affinity for intimacy and regression, proved effective in the management of psychopathologies rooted in infancy.     

A Bayesian predictive analysis of test scores

In the classical test theory, a high-reliability test always leads to a precise measurement. However, when it comes to the prediction of test scores, it is not necessarily so. Based on a Bayesian statistical approach, we predicted the distributions of test scores for a new subject, a new test, and a new subject taking a new test. Under some reasonable conditions, the predicted means, variances, and covariances of predicted scores were obtained and investigated. We found that high test reliability did not necessarily lead to small variances or covariances. For a new subject, higher test reliability led to larger predicted variances and covariances, because high test reliability enabled a more accurate prediction of test score variances. Regarding a new subject taking a new test, in this study, higher test reliability led to a large variance when the sample size was smaller than half the number of tests. The classical test theory is reanalyzed from the viewpoint of predictions and some suggestions are made.