入浴には心理的・身体的なリラックスを得る効果が期待されている．近年，入浴の心理的・生理的効果を促進する働きが指摘される微細気泡浴について，心理的効果を主観評価によって測定し，さら湯との比較によってその効果を検証した．特に，主観評価に複数の項目で構成された心理尺度を用いることで，微細気泡浴がどのような心理的側面で効果を持つか明らかにすることを試みた．12名の男子大学生を対象とした実験の結果，主成分分析を用いた検討により，気分状態の評価構造に快適感と覚醒感の2つの主要な軸が見出された．これらの2軸でさら湯と気泡量の異なる2つの微細気泡浴を比較した結果，入浴による覚醒感の増加が全入浴条件で共通して見られた一方，快適感に関しては気泡量の多い微細気泡浴のみ有意な増加を示した．微細気泡浴が快適感の側面で入浴の心理的効果を高めること，この効果が気泡量により影響されることが明らかとなった．

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.

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 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.

現在、3Dプリンタなど個人のものづくり環境が整いつつある。一般ユーザが感性的な判断に基づき自在にデザインできる支援手法の開発を目指し、本研究では3次元形状に対する感性評価の基本構造の解明を試みた。