Modification of depth and distance perception caused by long-term wearing of left-right reversing spectacles

For 35 to 39 days, four observers wore continuously left-right reversing spectacles which pseudoscopically reverse the order of binocular disparity and direction of convergence. In three tests, we investigated how the visual system copes with the transformation of depth and distance information due to the reversing spectacles. In stereogram observation, after a few days of wearing the spectacles. the observers sometimes perceived a depth order which was opposite to the depth order that they had perceived in the pre-spectacle-wearing period. Monocular depth cues contributed more to depth perception in the spectacle-wearing period than they did in the pre-spectacle-wearing period. While the perceived distance significantly decreased during the spectacle-wearing period, we found no evidence of adaptive change in distance perception. The results indicate that the visual system adapts itself to the transformed situation by not only changing the processing of disparity but also by changing the relative efficiency of each cue in determining apparent depth.     

Effects and Limitations of Prosodic and Semantic Biases on Syntactic Disambiguation

This paper examined the effects of prosody on the syntactic ambiguity resolution of Japanese sentences, especially with reference to the interaction with semantic bias. Syntactically ambiguous sentences with different types of semantic bias were constructed. The degree of bias in each sentence was evaluated through visual presentation experiments. Three types of sentences were selected based on the results of visual presentation experiments, were recorded with prosody maximally favoring each possible interpretation of the sentences, and were used as the stimuli for the auditory presentation experiments. The results showed that prosodic cues can influence the interpretation of a sentence even when the sentence is strongly semantically biased. The results also showed a limitation to prosodic cues. The prosodic biases alone were not sufficient to fully determine the interpretation of the sentences even when the sentences were neutrally biased semantically.     

Roles,Responsibility, and Accounts Across Cultures

In research on the attribution of responsibility, increasing attention is being paid to the fact that responsibility judgments are social negotiations, not just the cognitions of isolated individuals. In this negotiating process, accounts, including excuses and justifications, may diminish or even eliminate responsibility for wrongdoing. This paper presents a perspective on responsibility attribution and reviews recent literature on accounts. It emphasizes the way in which aspects of social roles—specifically, the solidarity or closeness of the parties and their hierarchical or equal status—may affect the choice and effectiveness of accounts. A second theme is the way in which the impact of various accounts may vary across cultures: In this case, the United States vs. Japan. We pay special attention to differences between roles and between cultures in use of three accounts: denial (e.g. “I didn't do it”); consensus (e.g. “everyone does it”); and apology. The paper draws on pilot research carried out in the U.S. and Japan. Results showed that solidarity, hierarchy, and culture each affected the use of accounts, but sometimes in complex ways. We conclude by offering speculations and suggestions for future cross-cultural research into the social psychology of attributing responsibility and offering accounts.     

Asymptotic distributions of the estimators of communalities in factor analysis

Asymptotic distributions of the estimators of communalities are derived for the maximum likelihood method in factor analysis. It is shown that the common practice of equating the asymptotic standard error of the communality estimate to the unique variance estimate is correct for standardized communality but not correct for unstandardized communality. In a Monte Carlo simulation the accuracy of the normal approximation to the distributions of the estimators are assessed when the sample size is 150 or 300. This study was carried out in part under the ISM Cooperative Research Program (90-ISM-CRP-9).     

Counsellor interpretations and the occurrence of in-session client change moments in non-dynamic psychotherapies

This study explored the relationship between therapist interpretations and optimal in-session client processes in 20 sessions conducted by exemplary psychotherapists of three different theoretical orientations: Client-Centred Therapy (CCT), Rational-Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT), and Gestalt/Existential Therapy (GT). The results indicated that interpretations were used with similar frequency across therapeutic approaches, but they were neither superior nor inferior to other interventions in relation to the occurrence of optimal in-session client processes. The results support the notion that interpretation is a commonly used therapist intervention and that different therapies accentuate different aspects of interpretation. Implications for psychotherapy integration are offered and the findings are discussed with reference to theory and clinical practice.     

Writing errors and anosognosia in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis with dementia

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) with dementia (ALS-D) is known to exhibit characteristics of frontotemporal dementia. However, in clinical situations, it is often difficult to evaluate their cognitive functions because of impaired voluntary speech and physical disabilities. In order to identify characteristic and diagnostic cognitive symptoms of relatively advanced ALS-D patients, we retrospectively reviewed the clinical features of seven cases of clinically definitive ALS who had dementia, impaired voluntary speech, and physical disability. Their medical records showed that six out of seven patients made writing errors, and all of the patients demonstrated anosognosia. The writing errors consisted of paragraphia such as substitution, omission, or syntactic errors with individual differences in error types. Dissociation between kana and kanji were also observed. Anosognosia was evaluated by a self-rating scale with which the patients and the medical staff evaluated the patient's physical ability; the results indicated a large discrepancy between the evaluation by the patients and the medical staff. We emphasize that aphasic writing errors have been underestimated, particularly in ALS-D patients with impaired voluntary speech. We also reported that anosognosia was the most important and quantifiable symptom in ALS-D. The relationship between writing errors and anosognosia should be investigated further.     

Illusory temporal order for stimuli at different depth positions

We used four experiments to examine how the perceived temporal order of two visual stimuli depends on the depth position of the stimuli specified by a binocular disparity cue. When two stimuli were presented simultaneously at different depth positions in front of or around a fixation point, the observer perceived the more distant stimulus before the nearer stimulus (Experiments 1 and 2). This illusory temporal order was found only for sudden stimulus presentation (Experiment 3). These results suggest that a common processing, which is triggered by sudden luminance change, underlies this illusion. The strength of the illusion increased with the disparity gradient and the disparity size (Experiment 4). We propose that this illusion has a basis in the processing of motion in depth, which would alert the observer to a potential collision with an object that suddenly emerges in front of the observer.     

Perturbation of Japanese mother-infant habitual interactions in the double video paradigm and relationship to maternal playfulness

Double video paradigm (DVP) studies have found contradictory evidence regarding the young infants' ability to discriminate their mother's 'replay' image from 'live'. This study examined the hypothesis that 4-month-old infants whose mothers showed high-levels-of-playful-behavior are more likely to discriminate social contingency in the DVP. We also examined the relationships between the infants' DVP behaviors and mothers' free-play behaviors at home with their 3-month-old infants. The results supported our hypothesis. Further, when the mothers' behaviors were reduced to playful companion (PC) and sensitive support (SS) by a principal component analysis, the level of PC was closely related to the infants' detection of social contingency, but SS was not. The different functions of mothers' 'playfulness' and 'sensitivity' in communication with their infants are discussed.