Structure also supports autonomy: Measuring and defining autonomy‐supportive teaching in Japanese elementary foreign language classes

Recent discussions of autonomy have included the perspective that, as a basic human need across cultural environments, it includes not only choice but also personal endorsement of action. The present study focused on the cultural experience of autonomy‐support in Japanese elementary school foreign language classes. Three studies were conducted to investigate how students understand autonomy‐supportive teaching. In Study 1, exploratory focus groups defined cultural perspectives on autonomy‐support and structure. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis indicated that clarity, pacing, and teachers' positive affect correspond to students' perception of supportive teaching. Study 2 investigated teacher support in relation to in‐class engagement using longitudinal structural equation modeling. The results indicated a strong relationship between perceptions of support and classroom behavioral engagement, with stable effects over time. Study 3 longitudinally investigated teacher support in relation to students' perceptions of personal autonomy, relatedness, and competence need satisfaction. Findings show a strong positive relationship between teacher support and need satisfaction with high test‐retest reliability. Discussion focuses on how autonomy need satisfaction is experienced in different cultures with differing social norms.     

Phonatory initiation,termination, and vocal frequency change reaction times of stutterers

Four types of voice reaction times were investigated for eight adult stutterers and eight control subjects using a vocal shadowing paradigm. These were voice initiation and termination reaction times (VIT and VTT, respectively) and voice frequency-shift intiation and termination reaction times (SIT and STT, respectively). Results indicated that the stutterers were slower in VIT, but were as fast as their control subjects in VTT, SIT, and STT. It was suggested that a laryngeal discoordination problem of stutterers lies primarily in the stage of adduction (turning on the voicing) rather than in the stage of abduction (turning off the voicing) or in finer frequency control at the larynx.     

An automatic analysis method of utterance and pause lengths and frequencies

Automatic analysis of the lengths and frequencies of utterance and pauses is highly desirable in the study of large amounts of speech produced by pathologic speakers and of interactive speech such as that between mother and child, clinician and client, and teacher and student. This paper describes a microcomputer-based analysis method of utterance and pause lengths and frequencies in connected speech. The instrumentation consists of a rectifier-smoother circuit, an analog-to-digital convertor and an Apple microcomputer. The printouts list utterances and pauses (in milliseconds) in the order of occurrence, and means and standard deviations of the utterances and pauses. The program and the results of reliability and validity tests of this method are described.     

Effect of unpleasant loud noise on hippocampal activities during picture encoding: an fMRI study

The functional link between the amygdala and hippocampus in humans has not been well documented. We examined the effect of unpleasant loud noise on hippocampal and amygdaloid activities during picture encoding by means of fMRI, and on the correct response in humans. The noise reduced activity in the hippocampus during picture encoding, decreased the correct response and increased the activity of the amygdala. A path diagram using structural equation modeling suggested that hippocampus activity might be depressed by high amygdala activity. Therefore, noise should diminish memory by reducing hippocampal activity, which might be depressed by high amygdala activity.     

Effects of chewing on cognitive processing speed

In recent years, chewing has been discussed as producing effects of maintaining and sustaining cognitive performance. We have reported that chewing may improve or recover the process of working memory; however, the mechanisms underlying these phenomena are still to be elucidated. We investigated the effect of chewing on aspects of attention and cognitive processing speed, testing the hypothesis that this effect induces higher cognitive performance. Seventeen healthy adults (20–34 years old) were studied during attention task with blood oxygenation level-dependent functional (fMRI) at 3.0 T MRI. The attentional network test (ANT) within a single task fMRI containing two cue conditions (no cue and center cue) and two target conditions (congruent and incongruent) was conducted to examine the efficiency of alerting and executive control. Participants were instructed to press a button with the right or left thumb according to the direction of a centrally presented arrow. Each participant underwent two back-to-back ANT sessions with or without chewing gum, odorless and tasteless to remove any effect other than chewing. Behavioral results showed that mean reaction time was significantly decreased during chewing condition, regardless of speed-accuracy trade-off, although there were no significant changes in behavioral effects (both alerting and conflict effects). On the other hand, fMRI analysis revealed higher activations in the anterior cingulate cortex and left frontal gyrus for the executive network and motor-related regions for both attentional networks during chewing condition. These results suggested that chewing induced an increase in the arousal level and alertness in addition to an effect on motor control and, as a consequence, these effects could lead to improvements in cognitive performance.     

Associations of blood glucose control with self-efficacy and rated anxiety/depression in type II diabetes mellitus patients

We investigated the possible relations of hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) level, a parameter of blood glucose control with scores on anxiety, depression, and self-efficacy for 113 outpatients (55 men and 58 women) with type II diabetes mellitus. The relation between the HbA1c level and the self-efficacy scores as well as with the ratings of anxiety and depression was evaluated. A significant relation was found for the HbA1c level with the scores; however, self-efficacy and anxiety and depression showed no association. These results suggest that HbA1c can be maintained at better levels by increasing self-efficacy of diabetic patients.     

Cultural Differences in Visual Search for Geometric Figures

While some studies suggest cultural differences in visual processing, others do not, possibly because the complexity of their tasks draws upon high‐level factors that could obscure such effects. To control for this, we examined cultural differences in visual search for geometric figures, a relatively simple task for which the underlying mechanisms are reasonably well known. We replicated earlier results showing that North Americans had a reliable search asymmetry for line length: Search for long among short lines was faster than vice versa. In contrast, Japanese participants showed no asymmetry. This difference did not appear to be affected by stimulus density. Other kinds of stimuli resulted in other patterns of asymmetry differences, suggesting that these are not due to factors such as analytic/holistic processing but are based instead on the target‐detection process. In particular, our results indicate that at least some cultural differences reflect different ways of processing early‐level features, possibly in response to environmental factors.