Socially anxious individuals with low working memory capacity could not inhibit the goal-irrelevant information

Socially anxious individuals are interfered by distractors. Recent work has suggested that low working memory capacity and inappropriate temporary goal induce attention to distractors. We investigated the effects of working memory capacity and temporary goal on attention to distractors in social anxiety. Participants viewed a rapid serial visual presentation, in which participants reported the identity of a single target letter drawn in red. Distractors appeared before the target was presented. When the color of distractors was red (i.e., goal-relevant stimuli), low-capacity individuals were strongly interfered by the distractors compared to high-capacity individuals regardless of social anxiety. When the color of distractors was goal-irrelevant, low-capacity and high socially anxious individuals were strongly interfered by the distractors. These results suggest that socially anxious individuals with low working memory capacity could not inhibit the goal-irrelevant information and direct attention to distractors

Impaired Attentional Disengagement from Stimuli Matching the Contents of Working Memory in Social Anxiety

Although many cognitive models in anxiety propose that an impaired top-down control enhances the processing of task-irrelevant stimuli, few studies have paid attention to task-irrelevant stimuli under a cognitive load task. In the present study, we investigated the effects of the working memory load on attention to task-irrelevant stimuli in trait social anxiety. The results showed that as trait social anxiety increased, participants were unable to disengage from task-irrelevant stimuli identical to the memory cue under low and high working memory loads. Impaired attentional disengagement was positively correlated with trait social anxiety. This impaired attentional disengagement was related to trait social anxiety, but not state anxiety. Our findings suggest that socially anxious people have difficulty in disengaging attention from a taskirrelevant memory cue owing to an impaired top-down control under a working memory load.This work was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellowship (10J06078)

イスラム教に対する顔イメージの可視化 : ステレオタイプ内容モデルの役割

日本パーソナリティ心理学会第26回大会　会期：2017年9月7日～8日　会場：東北文教大学本研究は平成27年度関西大学若手研究者育成経費（個人研究）において，研究課題「偏見による顔イメージの変化とその操作」として研究費を受け，その成果を公表するものである

Molecular phylogeny and evolution of <i>Parabasalia</i> with improved taxon sampling and new protein markers of actin and elongation factor-1α

Background: Inferring the evolutionary history of phylogenetically isolated, deep-branching groups of taxa—in particular determining the root—is often extraordinarily difficult because their close relatives are unavailable as suitable outgroups. One of these taxonomic groups is the phylum Parabasalia, which comprises morphologically diverse species of flagellated protists of ecological, medical, and evolutionary significance. Indeed, previous molecular phylogenetic analyses of members of this phylum have yielded conflicting and possibly erroneous inferences. Furthermore, many species of Parabasalia are symbionts in the gut of termites and cockroaches or parasites and therefore formidably difficult to cultivate, rendering available data insufficient. Increasing the numbers of examined taxa and informative characters (e.g., genes) is likely to produce more reliable inferences. Principal Findings: Actin and elongation factor-1a genes were identified newly from 22 species of termite-gut symbionts through careful manipulations and seven cultured species, which covered major lineages of Parabasalia. Their protein sequences were concatenated and analyzed with sequences of previously and newly identified glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase and the small-subunit rRNA gene. This concatenated dataset provided more robust phylogenetic relationships among major groups of Parabasalia and a more plausible new root position than those previously reported. Conclusions/Significance: We conclude that increasing the number of sampled taxa as well as the addition of new sequences greatly improves the accuracy and robustness of the phylogenetic inference. A morphologically simple cell is likely the ancient form in Parabasalia as opposed to a cell with elaborate flagellar and cytoskeletal structures, which was defined as most basal in previous inferences. Nevertheless, the evolution of Parabasalia is complex owing to several independent multiplication and simplification events in these structures. Therefore, systematics based solely on morphology does not reflect the evolutionary history of parabasalids

A Probabilistic Shaping Approach for Optical Region-of-Interest Signaling

We propose a probabilistic shaping approach for region-of-interest signaling, where a low-rate signal controls the desired probabilistic ranges of a high-rate data stream using a flexible distribution controller. In addition, we introduce run-length-aware values for frozen bit indices in systematic polar code to minimize the run-length without using run-length-limited code. Our compact system can support soft-decision forward-error-correction decoding with excellent spectral efficiency compared with related work based on hybrid modulation schemes.Comment: Cite to this paper as: Nguyen, Duc-Phuc, Yoshifumi Shiraki, Jun Muramatsu, and Takehiro Moriya. "A Probabilistic Shaping Approach for Optical Region-of-Interest Signaling." IEEE Photonics Technology Letters 34, no. 6 (2022): 309-31

Quantum Phase Transition in the Itinerant Antiferromagnet (V0.9Ti0.1)2O3

Quantum-critical behavior of the itinerant electron antiferromagnet (V0.9Ti0.1)2O3 has been studied by single-crystal neutron scattering. By directly observing antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations in the paramagnetic phase, we have shown that the characteristic energy depends on temperature as c_1 + c_2 T^{3/2}, where c_1 and c_2 are constants. This T^{3/2} dependence demonstrates that the present strongly correlated d-electron antiferromagnet clearly shows the criticality of the spin-density-wave quantum phase transition in three space dimensions.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Processing of Task-Irrelevant Natural Scenes in Social Anxiety

In this study, by manipulating perceptual load, we investigated whether socially anxious people process task-irrelevant, non-emotional, natural scenes. When attention was directed to letters and perceptual load was low, task-irrelevant natural scenes were processed, as evidenced by repetition priming effects, in both high and low socially anxious people. In the high perceptual load condition, repetition-priming effects decreased in participants with low social anxiety, but not in those with high social anxiety. The results were the same when attention was directed to pictures of animals: even in the high perceptual load condition, high socially anxious participants processed task-irrelevant natural scenes, as evidenced by flanker effects. However, when attention was directed to pictures of people, task-irrelevant natural scenes were not processed by participants in either anxiety group, regardless of perceptual load. These results suggest that high socially anxious individuals could not inhibit task-irrelevant natural scenes under conditions of high perceptual load, except when attention was focused on people

Traditional Chinese Medicine for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

More and more patients have been diagnosed as having chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) in recent years. Western drug use for this syndrome is often associated with many side-effects and little clinical benefit. As an alternative medicine, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has provided some evidences based upon ancient texts and recent studies, not only to offer clinical benefit but also offer insights into their mechanisms of action. It has perceived advantages such as being natural, effective and safe to ameliorate symptoms of CFS such as fatigue, disordered sleep, cognitive handicaps and other complex complaints, although there are some limitations regarding the diagnostic standards and methodology in related clinical or experimental studies. Modern mechanisms of TCM on CFS mainly focus on adjusting immune dysfunction, regulating abnormal activity in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and serving as an antioxidant. It is vitally important for the further development to establish standards for ‘zheng’ of CFS, i.e. the different types of CFS pathogenesis in TCM, to perform randomized and controlled trials of TCM on CFS and to make full use of the latest biological, biochemical, molecular and immunological approaches in the experimental design

Empathy and Understanding the Other Person

This article attempts to clarify the phenomenon of empathy, taking our \u27lived experience\u27 as its base. Some suggestions concerning its relation to understanding the other person are also given. In Chapter I, some of the significant studies of empathy (or sympathy) in philosophy and psy- chology are reviewed, and our everyday usage of the term \u27empathy\u27 is examined. Through these examinations, empathy is provisionally denned as \u27to live the identical world with the other person in an affective experience\u27. In Chapter I, the meaning of the \u27identity\u27 in the above definition is explicated. The \u27identity\u27 here means the identity of the kernel\u27 of our lived experience accompanied with some different implicit horizons. In Chapter I, in order to make explicit the lived phase of the identity, the traditional view of self and other-that is, the view in the subject-object scheme-is critically rejected. Only in the state of fusion of self and other, can both live the identical world. In Chapter W, the attitude under which a deep empathy could occur is clarified. And how the experience of empathy transforms the experiencer\u27s world is also discussed. Finally, in Chapter V, the great significance of empathy, as one \u27of the ways of understanding the other person, is emphatically pointed out