What factors attract people to play romantic video games?

People in romantic relationships often benefit from improved mental and physical health and well-being. Today, these relationships can be recreated using virtual agents. For instance, some people anthropomorphize and fall in love with a virtual partner in a romantic video game. Although previous psychological research has examined anthropomorphized agents, it has neglected virtual romantic relationships. This study aims to examine the desire to play underlying playing romantic video games (RVGs). In Study 1, 43 Japanese participants completed a survey about their desire to play RVGs and their current romantic relationship status. The research revealed that a human-like voice and the use of touch were perceived as important factors in anthropomorphized relationships. In Study 2, an independent sample of 281 Japanese participants replicated the results of Study 1 regarding the importance of voice and touch in RVGs. Moreover, we found that a desire to develop social skills and alleviate negative emotions independently desire to play RVG use. As an important first step, these findings reveal several factors which might contribute to developing a romantic relationship with a virtual agent

The oligosaccharides in a recombinant hepatitis B virus surface antigen (HBsAg) carrying the pre-S2 region derived from yeast

AbstractThe N- and O-linked oligosaccharides in a yeast-derived HBsAg M protein (pre-S2 + S) were analyzed. Two major structures of the N-linked oligosaccharides bound to residue Asn4 were determined to be high-mannose type oligosaccharides. Man7GlcNAc2 and Man8GlcNAc2, by two-dimensional sugar mapping of the corresponding pyridylamino oligosaccharides. Peptide mapping of the M protein, sequence analysis of the glycopeptides after β-elimination under reducing conditions and sugar-composition analysis revealed that the O-linked oligosaccharides were composed solely or mannose and bound to residue Ser5, Thr6, Thr7, Ser27, Ser28, Ser29 and Thr31 in the pre-S2 region

Huggable Communication Medium Maintains Level of Trust during Conversation Game

There have been several attempts in recent years to develop a remote communication device using sensory modalities other than speech that would induce a user’s positive experience with his/her conversation partner. Specifically, Hugvie is a human-shaped pillow as well as a remote communication device enabling users to combine a hugging experience with telecommunication to improve the quality of remote communication.The present research is based on the hypothesis that using Hugvie maintains users’level of trust toward their conversation partners in situations prone to suspicion. Thelevel of trust felt toward other remote game players was compared between participants using Hugvie and those using a basic communication device while playing a modified version of Werewolf, a conversation-based game, designed to evaluate trust. Although there are always winners and losers in the regular version of Werewolf, the rules were modified to generate a possible scenario in which no enemy was present among the players and all players would win if they trusted each other. We examined the effect of using Hugvie while playing Werewolf on players’ level of trust toward each other and our results demonstrated that in those using Hugvie, the level of trust toward other players was maintained

Semantic differential scale method can reveal multi-dimensional aspects of mind perception

As humans, we tend to perceive minds in both living and non-living entities, such as robots. From a questionnaire developed in a previous mind perception study, authors found that perceived minds could be located on two dimensions experience and agency. This questionnaire allowed the assessment of how we perceive minds of various entities from a multi-dimensional point of view. In this questionnaire, subjects had to evaluate explicit mental capacities of target characters (e.g. capacity to feel hunger). However, we sometimes perceive minds in non-living entities, even though we cannot attribute these evidently biological capacities to the entity. In this study, we performed a large-scale web survey to assess mind perception by using the semantic differential scale method. We revealed that two mind dimensions emotion and intelligence respectively corresponded to the two mind dimensions (experience and agency) proposed in a previous mind perception study. We did this without having to ask about specific mental capacities. We believe that the semantic differential scale is a useful method to assess the dimensions of mind perception especially for non-living entities that are hard to be attributed to biological capacities

Relationship between implicit false belief understanding and role play: Longitudinal study

Pretend play is one of the earliest forms of children’s imagination. While social pretend play (role play) may facilitate the development of theory of mind – including false belief understanding – theoretically, the reverse may be true; theory of mind may facilitate the development of role play. To clarify this relationship, the present longitudinal study examined whether toddler’s implicit understanding of false beliefs predicted their role play during preschool years. We examined 18-month-old toddlers’ looking time in an implicit false-belief task (Time 1). When the children were 4/5 years old (Time 2), children’s parents answered a questionnaire on their child’s engagement in role play, such as playing with an imaginary companion and impersonating an imagined character. Toddlers’ looking time in the false-belief task at Time 1 predicted impersonation scores at Time 2. The results suggest that early theory of mind skills can facilitate children’s role play

Impression evaluation of a robot

This study aimed to investigate the impression evaluation of a new type of robot. We have conducted two experiments, Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, and uploaded the raw data of each experimental result. A research article on the details of the experiment is currently being submitted to a journal.DataExperiment 1: Experiment_1_raw.xlsxExperiment 2: Experiment_2_raw.xlsx</p