The ego, the Other and the primal fact

Japan has absorbed many western ideas since the late nineteenth century, but Japanese philosophers have often been reluctant to accept the western idea of the “I” in its entirety. The I transgresses to the Other more easily than western philosophies think and imports what belongs to the Other as his own. How is this possible? Husserl attempted to explain the constitution of the Other by the intentionality that goes from the I to the Other, mediated by the body. However, Husserl later discovered that the constitution of both the I and the Other is more of a two-way movement. This double-movement is essential for all constitutions and departs from a deep (primal) dimension that is not yet egological. Even in the self-reflection of the I, a similar double-movement between the primal and egological dimensions can be seen. The I is supported, but at the same time threatened, by this movement.     

Vulnerability factors in depression: The facets of sociotropy and autonomy

Sociotropy-autonomy (Beck, 1983) describes a set of personality dimensions that relate to an individual's vulnerability to depression. Two recently developed scales, the Sociotropy-Autonomy Scale (Clark & Beck, 1991) and the Personal Style Inventory (Robinset al., 1994), have been developed in order to assess these personality dimensions. Typically, these measures are used in isolation and little published information is available concerning their interrelationship. The present study examined the relationship between the two scales and specified the various factors that emerge when the items of the two scales are integrated. Six hundred fifty-two participants responded to the Personal Style Inventory (Robinset al, 1994) and the Sociotropy-Autonomy Scale (Clark & Beck, 1991). A factor analysis on all of the items of the two scales revealed a five-factor structure (two sociotropy, two autonomy, and one achievement factor). The relationships among depression, the five derived factors, and the original scales developed by Clark and Beck (1991) and Robinset al. (1994) were critically examined. The results are discussed in the context of vulnerability to depression.     

A Japanese short form of the Swanson Cognitive Processing Test to measure working memory: reliability, validity, and differences in scores between primary school children of the United States and Japan

The purpose of this study was to examine the reliability and validity of a Japanese short form of the Swanson Cognitive Processing Test, which assesses capacity of working memory. Test-retest reliability was acceptable (r = .76). Concurrent validity was suggested through comparison of scores on the Reading Span Task (r = .55). Means on the Japanese short form were comparable with means for the 3 subtests for the older group and 2 subtests for the younger group. With the exception of the Auditory Digit Sequence, results suggested that both the Japanese short form and the initial Swanson Cognitive Processing Test measured comparably the working memory in the two samples of children.     

The Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Brief Version: factor structure and reliability

The short scale of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised (EPQR-S; H. J. Eysenck & S. B. G. Eysenck, 1992) is a 48-item personality questionnaire primarily designed to measure an individual's level of extraversion (vs. introversion) and neuroticism. Although L. J. Francis, L. B. Brown, and R. Philipchalk (1992) created the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised-Abbreviated (EPQR-A), an even briefer version of the EPQR-S, the reliability coefficients of some of the measures have been less than satisfactory (S. Forrest, C. A. Lewis, & M. Shevlin, 2000). Because brevity and reliability are both extremely important, the author of the present study created a briefer version of the EPQR-S, more reliable than the EPQR-A, by making slight alterations in the item content as well as the response format of the EPQR-S. Two hundred and sixty eight participants completed the original EPQR-S and the 24-item newly revised briefer version of the EPQR-S (EPQ-BV) twice. The findings revealed that the EPQ-BV has good internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and concurrent validity. A principal component analysis revealed a solution with factor loadings that accurately reflected the primary measures of the EPQR-S. These findings are discussed in relation to the psychometric properties of the EPQR-A and the original version of the EPQR-S.     

Relationship of worry and emotionality to test performance in a juku environment

The relationships between trait and state worry and emotionality and performance in a Juku environment were explored; these Japanese anxiety data were also compared in an international context. The Juku or ‘cram school’ provides additional after-school instruction to improve the probability of students getting into select private junior high schools. The subjects were 362 students in the fourth, fifth and sixth grades. Test anxiety was measured by the Japanese Children's Trait Worry and Emotionality Scale and the Japanese Children's State Worry and Emotionality Scale. The performance tests measured achievement in mathematics, social studies, Japanese language, and science. As expected, the relationship between the state worry measures and performance was stronger than between either state emotionality or the trait measures. The data also indicate that trait anxiety was dramatically less here than in other international contexts while state anxiety was moderately less.     

Do birds (pigeons and bantams) know how confident they are of their perceptual decisions?

Rhesus monkeys are known to recognize confidence about their immediate perceptual and cognitive decisions by using a betting procedure (Son and Kornell in The missing link in cognition: origins of self-reflective consciousness. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 296–320, 2005; Kornell et al. in Psychol Sci 18:64–71, 2007). In this report, we examined whether this ability is shared in two avian species (pigeons and bantams) in order to know how widespread this metacognitive ability is among animals. We trained pigeons and bantams to search for a differently colored disk (target) among others (distracters) displayed on a touch-sensitive monitor. In test, the subjects were required to choose one of two confidence icons, “risk” and “safe”, after the visual search. A peck at the “risk” icon after a correct response in the visual search (i.e., a peck at the target) was reinforced by food and light, while that after an incorrect response (i.e., a peck at a distracter) resulted in a timeout. A peck at the “safe” icon was always reinforced by food and light, or by light only, regardless of the visual search result. The percentages of “safe” choices after incorrect responses were higher than after correct responses in all six pigeons and two of three bantams. This behavior generalized to novel stimuli in some subjects, and even to a novel line-classification task in a pigeon. These results suggest that these two distantly related avian species have in common a metacognitive ability that allows them to recognize confidence about their immediate perceptual decisions.     

A Multimethod Multitrait Validity Assessment of Self‐Construal in Japan,Korea, and the United States

A large number of previous studies have used self‐construal to predict communication outcomes. Recent evidence, however, suggests that validity problems may exist in self‐construal measurement. The current study conducted a multimethod multitrait (Campbell & Fiske, 1959) validation study of self‐construal measures with data (total N= 578) collected in Korea (N= 200), Japan (N= 212), and the U.S. (N= 166). The data showed that the Singelis (1994) Self‐Construal Scale, the Cross, Bacon, and Morris (2000) Relational Interdependent Self‐Construal Scale (RISC), and the Kuhn and McPartland (1954) Twenty Statements Test (TST) lacked convergent and discriminant validity, both pan‐culturally and within each of the three countries included in the study. Scores on the TST were not significantly related to scores on the self‐construal scales, and the various self‐construal measures correlated more highly with measures of communication directness than with alternative measures of the same type of self‐construal. Substantial method effects were also observed. The results were tested for both 2‐ and 3‐dimensional models of self‐construal and for refined scales and scales with all items retained. The results of all analyses were inconsistent with the claim that self‐construal measures are construct valid.