Dominance of gait cycle duration in casual walking

In gait research, casual walking has been considered to be walking at a casual speed. However, it is unclear that walking speed is the most stable factor in casual walking compared to other factors such as cycle duration and stride length. Although walking speed can be calculated from cycle duration and stride length, it is not necessarily the case that these parameters are "stable" in the same manner. We therefore conducted an experiment to determine which of these three parameters is most stable, regarding walking speed as cycle speed and using the coefficient of variation across gait cycles as index of stability. Ten participants were invited to walk in their own casual manner, once a week for a period of four weeks. Cycle duration was measured by means of a foot switch attached to the right heel. To measure the moving distance, participants towed a distance meter. Stride length and cycle speed were measured using this device. Over the four-week period, cycle duration and stride length were stable, whereas cycle speed was the most variable parameter. Furthermore, in the results for each single day, the cycle duration was significantly more stable than the other parameters. These results suggest that, when we walk casually, cycle duration is the dominant factor, rather than stride length or walking speed.     

Effects of orientation-selective adaptation on the Z?llner illusion

The model of inhibitory interaction between orientation detectors was examined by prolonged presentation of grating patterns (which was expected to induce orientation-selective adaptation) before measurement of the Z?llner illusion. Adaptation effects were measured under conditions which excluded intrusion by the tilt aftereffect. In experiment 1, illusion magnitude greatly decreased only when the orientation of the adapting grating was the same as that of the inducing lines, which confirmed the first prediction deduced from the model. There was no effect of adapting grating when it was oriented more than 20 degrees away from the inducing lines. In experiment 2, adaptation effects were selective not only to orientation but also to spatial frequency. In experiment 3 it was shown that illusion reduction was mediated neither by lowered apparent contrast of the inducing lines nor by retinal adaptation. The results are discussed with respect to the nature of adaptation and possible physiological correlates.     

Influences of motion and depth on brightness induction: an illusory transparency effect?

To experiments were performed to investigate whether motion and binocular disparity influence brightness induction, and whether the effects of motion and binocular disparity, if any, interact with each other. In order to introduce motion, textured backgrounds were used as the inducing field. The results showed that motion and/or crossed disparity reduce brightness induction, whereas uncrossed disparity increases it. The effect of motion and the effect of disparity are independent of each other and additive, which suggests that, to the extent that brightness induction reflects segmentation of objects, motion and binocular disparity serve independently to segment objects from their background. The difference between the effects of crossed and uncrossed disparity can be explained by what we call 'illusory transparency'.     

Short report: the effect of expertise in hiking on recognition memory for mountain scenes

The nature of an expert memory advantage that does not depend on stimulus structure or chunking was examined, using more ecologically valid stimuli in the context of a more natural activity than previously studied domains. Do expert hikers and novice hikers see and remember mountain scenes differently? In the present experiment, 18 novice hikers and 17 expert hikers were presented with 60 photographs of scenes from hiking trails. These scenes differed in the degree of functional aspects that implied some action possibilities or dangers. The recognition test revealed that the memory performance of experts was significantly superior to that of novices for scenes with highly functional aspects. The memory performance for the scenes with few functional aspects did not differ between novices and experts. These results suggest that experts pay more attention to, and thus remember better, scenes with functional meanings than do novices.     

Patients' rights in Japan: progress and resistance

The discussion of patients' rights in Japan began in 1968 when a surgeon was accused of violating a potential organ donor's right to life by arbitrarily employing brain-based criteria in the determination of his death. A proliferation of documents that articulate and endorse patients' rights occurred in the 1980s and early 1990s. The doctrine of informed consent, which has been a central aspect of the movement toward patients' rights, is increasingly recognized in Japan, although importance rarely has been attached to the element of the patient's "appreciation" of the information disclosed by the physician, much less to the "voluntariness" of the patient's decision. Nevertheless, recent court decisions indicate progress both in the acceptance and the understanding of the doctrine in Japan.     

An Evolutionary Account of Suicide Attacks: The Kamikaze Case

Explanations for suicide attacks abound. Yet the literature remains conceptually fragmented, with different authors focusing on different attitudes, incentive structures, values, psychological processes, strategic imperatives, and cultural, historical, and personal circumstances. Curiously, however, there have been few efforts to cast suicide bombing within the extensive evolutionary literature on human altruism—in which it clearly belongs. Neither have there been more than occasional efforts to mobilize the distinction between “proximate” and “ultimate” explanations, with most proposed explanations being proximate. Here we draw on content analyses from materials written by Japanese Kamikaze pilots to propose an evolvable cognitive algorithm—by hypothesis, species typical—that (1) specifies environmental circumstances under which such “heroic” behavior is likely; (2) is consistent at the proximate level with the Japanese data; and (3) that is not inconsistent with many of the diverse proximate attitudes, values, and psychological mechanisms that dominate discussions of contemporary suicide campaigns. The evolutionary perspective is not an alternative to most of the proximate explanations offered in discussions of contemporary cases but is, rather, a paradigm around which diverse proximate explanations can be organized.     

Psychological support for junior high school students: sibling order and sex

This study is a re-analysis of published data on psychological support for 609 junior high school students (317 boys, 292 girls, mean age = 14.1, SD = 0.8) based on the self-report, Psychological Support Scale, to evaluate sibling order as eldest or youngest and sex. In an earlier study, the questionnaire had been modified to be applicable to junior high school students. The study re-examined the data by extracting samples for categories of eldest and youngest siblings, for re-analysis of self-reported psychological support by sibling order and sex. Eldest children reported receiving more psychological support from both mother and father than youngest. Also, eldest boys received significantly greater psychological support from both the parents than the youngest boys or girls.     

Short report: The effect of expertise in hiking on recognition memory for mountain scenes

The nature of an expert memory advantage that does not depend on stimulus structure or chunking was examined, using more ecologically valid stimuli in the context of a more natural activity than previously studied domains. Do expert hikers and novice hikers see and remember mountain scenes differently? In the present experiment, 18 novice hikers and 17 expert hikers were presented with 60 photographs of scenes from hiking trails. These scenes differed in the degree of functional aspects that implied some action possibilities or dangers. The recognition test revealed that the memory performance of experts was significantly superior to that of novices for scenes with highly functional aspects. The memory performance for the scenes with few functional aspects did not differ between novices and experts. These results suggest that experts pay more attention to, and thus remember better, scenes with functional meanings than do novices.