This study examined the psychological relaxation effects of micro-bubble bathing by employing psychological approach. Normal and two micro-bubble baths were compared in terms of their psychological effects; these were measured by subjective ratings. Using a subjective rating scale that consisted of multiple rating items, an investigation was carried out to determine the psychological aspects that were affected by micro-bubble baths. Twelve male graduate and undergraduate students took part in the experiment. A principal component analysis on subjective rating scale revealed that mood state related to bathing consisted of two aspects: pleasant and arousal. A comparison between three bathing conditions revealed that these bathing conditions shared the arousal-increasing effect. Moreover, the results showed that micro-bubble bathing with a high bubble content improved pleasant aspect of mood state more than normal bathing and micro-bubble bathing with a low bubble content did. This finding suggests that the psychological effect of micro-bubble bathing would be to improve the pleasant-increasing effect of bathing behavior.

Enhancing interpersonal relationships is considered to be an important function of musical communication, especially with regard to collective musical activity such as ensemble performances. Music may serve this function by affording participants the opportunity to interact nonverbally, as well as by its acoustical properties. The present study aimed to investigate whether nonverbal communication influenced the development of dyadic rapport, through a simple ensemble task. Specifically, body movement was addressed, since it is a typical nonverbal channel used in ensemble performance. Two participants executed a synchronization task under a situation in which all visual cues other than body movement were excluded. Ensemble coordination, body movement, and self-rating for interaction during the ensemble task were measured, and the relationships among them were analyzed by means of structural equation modeling (SEM). Most remarkable of all the results, communication through body movement showed a positive direct effect on the interaction ratings.対人的な結びつきを強化する機能は、コミュニケーションメディアとしての音楽がもつ重要な機能の1つと考えられる。合奏のような集団的音楽活動は、音響情報を中心にさまざまな非言語チャネルによる対人的相互作用の機会を提供すると考えられるが、その対人的な機能と非言語行動との関係には未検討な部分が多い。そこで本研究は、非言語チャネルとして身体動作に注目し、合奏課題を通した対人的相互作用への参与者の満足度に対し、身体動作チャネルのコミュニケーションが及ぼす影響の検討を目的とした。身体動作以外の視覚情報が除外された環境下で単純な合奏課題を実施し、課題の成績、身体動作、合奏課題を通じて実験参加者が形成する相互作用に対する満足度を測定し、これらの間の関係性を共分散構造分析によって解析した。結果から、満足度に対する身体動作のコミュニケーションによる直接的な影響がみられ、非言語チャネルでの相互作用が合奏の対人的効果を直接的に規定する要因である可能性が示唆された。

The platform of personal fabrication is developed by technologies such as 3D printing. However, most people do not have enough professional knowledge or skills to design these products. A promising approach relates subjective impressions to physical parameters to support intuitive design. This study aimed to build a model that predicts a "high-class feeling," which is a product value, using physical features. The present study constructed a model that relates the subjective "high-class feeling" of products to physical features. Using a cosmetic compact as an example, a comprehensive high-class feeling and its 5 sub-factors were rated by 20 participants, and regression models were built to estimate those ratings based on physical parameters. This study suggests that a comprehensive high-class feeling is well explained by "elegance" and "luxuriance" and better estimated indirectly via these sub-factors than directly from physical features.

This research investigated the psychological stressors during the COVID-19 pandemic and the effects of essential oil odor exposure. In Japan, a stay-at-home restriction order was implemented in May 2020. We sent essential oils to the homes of 30 participants. The participants received emails 5 times a day for 6 days and reported how they felt before and after the essential oil odor exposure. They also reported their circumstances and intentions. Results showed that the vitality and stability levels increased after essential oil odor exposure. Besides, four psychological stress structures were obtained. Some of the participants felt conflicted about balancing housework, childcare, and work. They were the most stressed, and their vitality and stability levels increased considerably.

In recent years, there has been concern regarding the frequent occurrence of nighttime collisions. This research aims to clarify how differences in tail lamp design affect their visibility to other drivers, with a view to develop a design that will make tail lamps more conspicuous. By focusing on visibility in human face recognition abilities, we conducted a subjective evaluation experiment and visual search task using rear-shots of vehicles. The experimental results revealed that a human's impression of a rear-shot of a vehicle is structurally similar to their impression of a face, and that the tail lamp design affects reaction time. Moreover, electroencephalogram (EEG) measurements verified the validity of the results from a neuroscience perspective. These findings may be used for developing tail lamp designs that are more striking so as to be more noticeable to fellow drivers.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019. The spread of digital fabrication technologies such as 3D printers has increased opportunities to utilize 3D data. A support system for users without specialized knowledge must model the relationships between impressions received from shapes and the shapes’ physical elements. Regarding the structure of impressions, previous works have hypothesized that a hierarchical structure with a lower layer closely related to physical parameters and an upper layer representing more abstract impressions. To extract the hierarchical structure of impressions for 3D shapes in this work, we conducted the Evaluation Grid Method to visualize an impression’s hierarchical structure. Ten art university students and 10 non-art university students participated in the experiment and provided impressions they had formed from the 3D shapes presented as photographs. We extracted the hierarchical structure, including the impressions used in previous works in the upper side. The impressions representing the state and the features of shapes were extracted in the lower side. By classifying the language expressions representing the state and features from aspects of the shape’s local features, the language expressions were classified into some similar viewpoints between participants’ groups. While the language expressions representing abstract impressions varied between groups, and the language expressions related to “activity” were extracted only from art students. These findings revealed that there is not only a generality in the viewpoint strongly related to physical quantity but also differences based on knowledge and experience among individuals with regard to the more abstract impression.

In the present study, the subjective evaluation experiment for abstract 3D shapes was conducted as the first step of construction of a system that allows non-design-professional users to design 3D shapes via subjective evaluation words intuitively. In particular, the structure of the subjective evaluation for 3D shapes and the reliability of the evaluation by non-design-professionals were examined. The results showed three-factor solution in which “Uniformity,” “Activity” and “Potency” factors were important evaluative standards in the subjective evaluation for 3D shapes. These factors are similar to Osgood's three factors, which were frequently reported factors in previous semantic differential studies. Furthermore, the subjective evaluations by non-design-professionals were generally consistent, which means that, with respect to the subjective evaluation, non-design-professionals without high level of design skills can evaluate 3D shapes in a reliable way.

The key to encouraging feelings for approaching actions is to call forth “autonomous motivation.” Motivation includes “intrinsic,” “autonomous extrinsic,” and “heteronomous extrinsic” motivations. “Intrinsic” and “autonomous extrinsic” motivations are autonomous. In this study, “Motivative Communication Model” was proposed to facilitate internalization of autonomous motivation in pro-environmental behavior (PEB). The questionnaire method on PEB was carried out. As a result, motivation for PEB, a relation between motivations, and the characteristics of user type were shown, and the quantitative scale of internalization was proposed. In the future, we will aim at enhancing the internalization to suit each user type.

To represent the texture of woven fabrics in computer graphics (CG), it is important to reveal the relation between their physical properties and the texture caused by them. For efficient representation of a realistic texture, a new layered model that links visual impressions with physical properties is required. Physical properties of woven fabrics include optical properties. They are reproduced by bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) and the bidirectional transmittance distribution function (BTDF). However, it is not easy to handle BRDF and BTDF because of the enormity of these data. Therefore, it is necessary to effectively integrate the dimensionality of BRDF and BTDF. In this paper, we propose the impression-evaluation model to link visual impressions with physical properties of woven fabrics. Moreover, to incorporate physical properties into the model, we investigate the main physical factors of reflection and transmission in woven fabrics using the multivariable analysis technique of principal component analysis (PCA) of BRDF and BTDF. As a result, three principal components of BRDF and two principal components of BTDF are obtained. Therefore, it becomes possible for inexpert people to make CG with realistic texture of woven fabrics more intuitively and easily by incorporating physical factors into the impression-evaluation model.

This study examines the relevance of the characteristics of flow experience to intrinsic motivation during piano playing. The theory of task-value is suitable for evaluating an aspect of intrinsic motivation as autonomous learning motivation and the value of fulfillment and satisfaction. Participants who have musical abilities but are not professional musicians, performed music of a subject 5 times for an hour each time. They completed the Academic Task-Value Evaluation Scale before performing and the Flow Experience Checklist afterwards. The interest value had a significant correlation with all of the subscales of the Flow Checklist (r=.581-.846, ps<.01). These results suggest that both professional and non-expert musicians can experience flow, if any task could measure up to their value of interest. We propose to better understand how much value of and interest for a challenging task people have that makes it easier for them to enjoy everyday life.

The present longitudinal study aimed to investigate the relationship between acquisition of performance skills and flow as an index of intrinsic motivation. At the end of each piano practice, partic- ipants completed the questionnaire about the flow experience scale during piano practice. To determine the effects of training with practice, several tests to assess performance skills were carried out before and after twenty hours of practice. The specific state in which the flow was experienced or flow experience itself were suggested to be effective in acquisition of performance skills.

This study assesses how people interpret human ages based on images of faces. We assigned the age of the people imagining how old they are as the "subjective age" and proposed an experiment to identify its mechanism. The participants in the experiment were presented with the facial images of other people and asked to estimate the ages of those in the images as either younger or older than their own ages. Then, we calculated the difference between the subjective ages given by participants that matched their own ages and the actual ages of the people in the images. Results showed that subjective age was generally underestimated by Japanese, Korean, and American groups. The results also suggest that the factors of a younger identity include 1) the effect of delusions of the accumulated memory of self-image, and 2) sociopsychological parameters. To examine the effect of delusions of the accumulated memory of faces, we conducted the experiments of relative age comparison between well-known others' faces (own brothers/sisters) and unknown others' faces. The results confirmed that people tended to underestimate the ages of well-known others' faces compared with unknown faces. These results are consistent with our hypothesis that a younger identity is influenced by the effect of delusions of the accumulated memory of known faces.