"Blue and seven phenomena" among Japanese students

To investigate color and number preferences in Japan, 586 university undergraduates (239 men and 347 women; M age = 20.9 yr.) were asked to name a color (Question 1), to name their preferred color (Question 2), and to name their preferred number between zero and nine (Question 3). The results showed that Japanese students chose blue (33.5%) or red (26.0%) when asked to name a color but that red was not chosen as frequently as blue as a preferred color (red: 11.1%, blue: 37.1%). Sex differences were found on both Questions 1 and 2 by chi-squared test. Black was chosen more by men, while pink was selected more by women. 22.5% subjects also selected the number seven, supporting Simon's observation of the "blue-seven phenomenon." The reasons given for the choice showed that seven was "a lucky number" and "represented happiness" among Japanese students. Four colors (blue, red, white, and black) accounted for 76.8% and 65.1% of responses to Questions 1 and 2, respectively, and odd numbers 68.4% for Question 3.     

Interactive processing of phonological information in reading Japanese Kanji character words and their phonemic radicals

Kanji are categorized into four types based on the combinations of "subword validity" (when the right phonemic radical represents the same On-reading as the whole Kanji character) and "radical-neighbor consistency" (when the whole Kanji character represents the same On-reading as all of its neighbor characters). The study demonstrated that both subword validity and radical-neighbor consistency affect naming latencies and error rates regardless of character frequency. The study also demonstrated that the subword validity affects ease of extraction of a subword's phonology. These results suggest that the phonology of the whole Kanji competes with the subword's phonology. Moreover, the competition is stronger when the radical-neighbors aid in extracting the phonology of the whole Kanji.     

Motivational control of impulsive behavior interacts with choice opportunities

Impulsive behavior has been investigated through choice between a smaller/immediate reinforcer and a larger/delayed reinforcer, or through performance on a differential reinforcement of low rate (DRL) schedule. In the present study, we investigated a methodological divergence between these two procedures: in the former procedure, delay is a consequence of the subject's own choice, whereas in the later procedure, subjects are explicitly reinforced for delaying a response. In Experiment 1, 7 rats maintained at 80% of their free-feeding weights showed poorer efficiency of lever-pressing responses on a DRL 30-s schedule than when they were maintained at 90% of free-feeding weight. In Experiment 2, 16 rats were subjected to a concurrent chain schedule: the initial link was concurrent fixed ratio 1 fixed ratio 1, and each of these alternatives was followed by a short-DRL requirement with a one pellet reinforcer or a long-DRL requirement with a three pellet reinforcer. In one block of trials, rats were not allowed to choose between the two terminal links (forced-choice), whereas in the other block of trials rats were allowed to choose freely between the two terminal links (free-choice). Compared with rats maintained at 95% of their free-feeding weights, rats maintained at 80% of their free-feeding weights showed poorer efficiency in the terminal links’ DRL schedule performance (just as in Experiment 1), but this difference was shown only in the forced-choice blocks. These results indicate that motivational control of DRL schedule performance interacts with type of choice-making opportunity and highlight the direct comparison of motivational control of impulsive choice and DRL schedule performance.     

Habituation of exploratory activity to new stimuli, to the absence of a previously presented stimulus and to new contexts, in rats

Rats trained to run a shuttle-alleyway for food exhibited exploratory behaviour to a novel visual/tactual stimulus presented in a specific place of the alley. Intermittent presentation of the same stimulus in the same place resulted in reduction of the exploratory activity (habituation), both within and between sessions. The animals also directed exploratory activity to the absence of the previously presented stimulus at the place where the stimulus had been presented before; this latter response also habituated. The presentation (1) of the same stimulus to which the animals had already habituated in another place in the alleyway or when the animals were running in an opposite direction to the previous trials of stimulus presentation, or (2) of another stimulus, resulted, again, in the appearance of exploratory activity. These results lead to the conclusion that the animals code external events, store this information, and use it to detect spatial- and directional-contextual changes and to generate predictions about that specific environment.     

Achievement Goal Impacts Students' Preferences for “Personalized Problems” in Computer-Adaptive Tests1

The contemporary development of psychometric theories and information technologies enables students to work on algorithm-based personalized tests in classroom settings. This study aims to investigate the relationship between students' achievement goals and what they prefer as “personalized problems” in computer-adaptive tests. We theoretically contrast achievement goals with developing competency through mastery and demonstrating competency through performance goals. We asked elementary and secondary school students to work on a computer-adaptive test and to complete questionnaires about what they prefer as “personalized problems” in computer-adaptive tests. The results revealed that while mastery goals positively predicted preference for challenging problems, performance goals positively predicted preference for problems that guaranteed students’ success. Moreover, only the preference for challenging problems positively predicted the intention to take computer-adaptive tests in the future. These results suggest that simply introducing a computer-adaptive test into the classroom may not be effective. We discuss how educational technologies should be integrated into human teaching activities.     

Time-shrinking,its propagation,and Gestalt principles

When a relatively short empty time interval is preceded by an even shorter one, its duration can be underestimated remarkably. This phenomenon, called time-shrinking, has been investigated with patterns consisting of two time intervals. In five experiments, we investigated whether underestimation of the last interval would occur when it was preceded by two time intervals. Significant underestimations of the last interval occurred in some of those patterns. The influence of the second preceding interval was dominant, but in some patterns, the first preceding interval could shrink the subjective duration of the last time interval directly. The first interval could also affect perception of the duration of the last one indirectly by shrinking the second interval, as a result of which the latter either shrank the last interval more strongly or became too short to shrink it. There were two types of temporal patterns in which the perceived duration of the last interval could not be explained by time-shrinking or its propagation through the pattern. It seemed plausible that auditory Gestalt principles invoked strong figural organizations in these patterns, which rendered the time-shrinking mechanism inoperative.     

Typ-Ken (an Amalgam of Type and Token) Drives Infosphere

Floridi’s infosphere consisting of informational reality is estimated and delineated by introducing the new notion of Typ-Ken, an undifferentiated amalgam of type and token that can be expressed as either type or token dependent on contingent ontological commitment. First, we elaborate Floridi’s system, level of abstraction (LoA), model, and structure scheme, which is proposed to reconcile ontic with epistemic structural reality, and obtain the duality of type and token inherited in the relationship between LoA and model. While we focus on the ontological commitment that can negotiate and emphasize the discrepancy between type and token, we show that most research focusing on different hierarchical layers (type and token) has converged onto the flattened perspective of type and token to clarify the role of ontological commitment. We propose the idea of Typ-Ken to avoid this flattening. In addition, we elaborate Taddeo and Floridi’s criticism of approaches to the symbol grounding problem and show that their criticism based on the zero semantical commitment condition is specific to the agents affected by the flattening. We then take bird flocks as a metaphor for the living infosphere as if it had one mind. The knowledge recently yielded by image analysis indicates that it is difficult for previous flock models based on agents equipped with the flattening of local (token) and global (type) to show the special feature of a flock of the scale-free proportion (SFP). We show here that agents based on the Typ-Ken can reveal the SFP, which is the essential characteristic of the living infosphere. In other words, Typ-Ken is an expression for informational reality (LoA and model with ontological commitment) that can reveal seamless local and global interactions in the functioning of a flock or infosphere.