Yoshiyuki Ueda

Mindfulness meditation consists of focused attention meditation (FAM) and open monitoring meditation (OMM), both of which reduce activation of the default mode network (DMN) and mind-wandering. Although it is known that FAM requires intentional focused attention, the mechanisms of OMM remain largely unknown. To investigate this, we examined striatal functional connectivity in 17 experienced meditators (mean total practice hours = 920.6) during pre-resting, meditation, and post-resting states com

Previous studies have found that Westerners are more likely than East Asians to attend to central objects (i.e., analytic attention), whereas East Asians are more likely than Westerners to focus on background objects or context (i.e., holistic attention). Recently, it has been proposed that the physical environment of a given culture influences the cultural form of scene cognition, although the underlying mechanism is yet unclear. This study examined whether the physical environment influences o

We developed a new high-resolution facial expression image database with multiple face directions and multiple gaze directions. This database was developed for usage as materials for psychological experiments and included six basic expressions (angry, disgusted, fearful, happy, sad, and surprised) and neutral expressions. Facial expressions in the database were formed in accordance with the instructions based on previous studies. To obtain the most expressive faces, models checked their facial e

The ability to perceive a person's dominance plays an important role in survival and pro-social behavior. Perceived dominance has been investigated via assessments of facial expressions in 1-on-1 interaction situations, with expressions of anger and disgust judged to be more dominant. Given that human social interactions are complex, and multiple individuals interact at the same time, we investigated perceptions of trait dominance (an individual's competence and tendency to engage in dominant be

Forming specific facial expressions influences emotions and perception. Bearing this in mind, studies should be reconsidered in which observers expressing neutral emotions inferred personal traits from the facial expressions of others. In the present study, participants were asked to make happy, neutral, and disgusted facial expressions: for "happy," they held a wooden chopstick in their molars to form a smile; for "neutral," they clasped the chopstick between their lips, making no expression; f

Recent studies have indicated that the object representation acquired during visual learning depends on the encoding modality during the test phase. However, the nature of the differences between within-modal learning (eg visual learning-visual recognition) and cross-modal learning (eg visual learning-haptic recognition) remains unknown. To address this issue, we utilised eye movement data and investigated object learning strategies during the learning phase of a cross-modal object recognition e

Abstract The vanishing point seems to be a useful cue for understanding scenes at a glance. The closer the objects are, the smaller their sizes become. Because the resolution of central vision is higher than that of peripheral vision, seeing a vanishing point enables individuals to perceive the whole scene. Here, we examined whether vanishing points attract eye movements during visual search. In E xperiment 1, we conducted a free‐viewing task to examine whether vanishing points play a significan

We intuitively perceive mood or collective information of facial expressions without much effort. Although it is known that statistical summarization occurs even for faces instantaneously, it might be hard to perceive precise summary statistics of facial expressions (i.e., using all of them equally) since recognition of them requires the binding of multiple features of a face. This study assessed which information is extracted from the crowd to understand mood. In a series of experiments, twelve

Despite robots being applied in various situations of modern society, some people avoid them or do not feel comfortable interacting with them. Designs that allow robots to interact appropriately with people will make a positive impression on them resulting in a better evaluation of robots, which will solve this problem. To establish such a design, this study conducted two scenario-based experiments focusing on the politeness of the robot's conversation and behavior, and examined the impressions

Robots have tremendous potential, and have recently been introduced not only for simple operations in factories, but also in workplaces where customer service communication is required. However, communication robots have not always been accepted. This study proposes a three-stage (first contact, interaction, and decision) model for robot acceptance based on the human cognitive process flow to design preferred robots and clarifies the elements of the robot and the processes that affect robot acce

Attention plays a crucial role in cognition and behavior. To explain the cultural variability of attention, we postulated a general hypothesis of cultural adaptation, which assumes that the attentional mechanism co-evolves with objects in our environment. We employed a three-level approach composed of hypothesis-driven experiments, a large-scale database platform gathering results from various parts of the world (“Kokoro World Map”), and corpus-based analyses. This article reports on an attempt

Visual search asymmetry is a phenomenon in which search efficiency changes in accordance with a swapping target and distractor, and which has been observed with a variety of target types. Previous studies assume that search asymmetry is achieved due to the difference of activation, which is calculated by considering each feature separately (e.g., color, orientation, and intensity). According to this prediction, for each participant, search asymmetry would be consistent across a target type, if t

Exposure to the same information improves auditory/verbal short-term memory performance, but such improvement is not always observed in visual short-term memory. In this study, we demonstrate that sequential processing makes visuospatial repetition learning efficient in a paradigm that employs a similar design previously used for an auditory/verbal domain. When we presented sets of color patches simultaneously in Experiments 1-4, recall accuracy did not increase with repetition; however, once co

Scene images are complex arrangements of multiple items, yet we can have memory for them. However, not all scene images can be remembered with equal performance; it is possible to have outstanding memory for some scenes, but poor for others. This characteristic is called memorability. This study examined the hypothesis that scenes with high memorability are more salient, thus attracting attention more quickly and difficult to disengage, resulting in the scene being remembered. To investigate thi