Katsumi Watanabe

Waseda University | Sōdai · Faculty of Science and Engineering

Red color signals dominance in both animals and humans. This study investigated whether a red background color influences the perception of dominance in human faces and geometric shapes. The facial stimuli consisted of computer-generated faces, quantitatively morphed into nine levels of dominance, ranging from less dominant to more dominant. This i...

The self can be associated with arbitrary images, such as geometric figures or unknown faces. By adopting a cross-cultural perspective, we explored in two experiments whether the self can be associated with faces of unknown people from different ethnic groups. In Experiment 1, Asian Japanese participants completed a perceptual matching task, associ...

In recent decades, the field of moral psychology has focused on moral judgments based on some moral foundations/categories (e.g., harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity). When discussing the moral categories, however, whether a person judges moral compliance or moral violation has been rarely consid...

In empirical art research, understanding how viewers judge visual artworks as beautiful is often explored through the study of attributes—specific inherent characteristics or artwork features such as color, complexity, and emotional expressiveness. These attributes form the basis for subjective evaluations, including the judgment of beauty. Buildin...

Beliefs in supernatural agents or religious beliefs are pervasive, yet there are individual differences in such beliefs. Although various factors have been proposed as relevant, recent research has increasingly emphasized the importance of cultural learning, showing that enthusiastic religious behavior (credibility enhancing displays; CREDs) from p...

Recent evidence indicates that reward value encoding in humans is highly context dependent, leading to suboptimal decisions in some cases, but whether this computational constraint on valuation is a shared feature of human cognition remains unknown. Here we studied the behaviour of n = 561 individuals from 11 countries of markedly different socioec...

This study examined how individuals would express their preference or distaste for experiences associated with beverages they found to be delicious or unpalatable using facial expressions. We recorded videos where six individuals were asked to drink their preferred or unpreferred beverages and to make “delicious” or “unpalatable” expressions irresp...

Learning with dynamic facial expressions often results in higher face recognition performance than with static images. However, few studies have used both positive and negative facial expressions to investigate the effects of dynamic facial expression information on recognition memory. The present study examined whether the effect of dynamic facial...

Obesity and overweight have drastically increased in developed countries, notably due to the widespread belief that unhealthy foods taste better than healthy ones. In this study, we investigated what kind of relationship do Japanese people hold between health and taste, using a classic IAT paradigm. Results indicate that participants hold the oppos...

Even though humans are adept at distinguishing various faces, inversion dramatically spoils the ability. This face inversion effect is remarkably robust across observers; however, whether inversion impairs the perception of facial parts (particularly the eye) is inconsistent across studies. Some studies have shown that featural processing remains p...

A novel motion stimulus is perceived to last longer than the subsequent motion stimulus moving in the opposite direction. A previous study suggested that the discrepancy in the processing latency for different onset types, as measured by reaction time, may play a role in this duration expansion. The present study examined whether the speed of motio...

Obesity and overweight have drastically increased in developed countries, notably due to the widespread belief that unhealthy foods taste better than healthy ones. In this study, we investigated what kind of relationship do Japanese people hold between health and taste, using a classic IAT paradigm. Results indicate that participants hold the oppos...

Interpersonal space (IPS) refers to the area surrounding the body in which we engage in social interactions while maintaining our comfort. Numerous previous studies have reported the psychological and physiological changes associated with the proximity of two people engaged in face-to-face interaction. Currently, there is limited knowledge about ho...

A correct perception of one’s own abilities is essential for making appropriate decisions. A well-known bias in probability perception is that rare events are overestimated. Here, we examined whether such a bias also exists for action outcomes using a simple reaction task. In Experiment 1, after completing a set of 30 trials of the simple reaction...

Fear memories enhance survival especially when the memories guide defensive movements to minimize harm. Accordingly, fear memories and body movements have tight relationships in animals: Fear memory acquisition results in adapting reactive defense movements, while training active defense movements reduces fear memory. However, evidence in humans is...

Studies have shown that duration perception depends on several visual processes. However, the stages of visual processes that contribute to duration perception remain unclear. This study examined the effects of categorical differences in face adaptation on perceived duration. In all the experiments, we compared the perceived durations of human, mon...

People consistently associate colors with tastes (e.g., pink-sweet, yellow-sour). However, little has been known on the strength of those color-taste correspondences. The current study examined the congruency effect of color-taste correspondence using two Stroop word categorization tasks. The visual stimuli consisted of food names associated with s...

Automatic imitation, in which one person’s movement is affected by the observation of another person’s movements, has been widely reported. However, it remains unclear how automatic imitation changes over a wide age range, particularly during childhood. In this study, we examined the differences in the tendency for automatic imitation between adult...

Personal objects are known to have several psychological effects on their owners. However, the formation of a sense of object ownership (SoOO) remains unclear. This study tested the hypothesis that a sense of agency (SoA) is related to the formation of SoOO. As such, we conducted nine experiments: participants played a simple game on a computer, wh...

Numerous studies have suggested that threatening stimuli induce a spatial attention bias; however, only a few studies have investigated spatial attention biases for disgusting stimuli. Moreover, past studies generally reported that the spatial attention bias to disgusting images is not robustly in normal individuals. We hypothesized that this was d...

Color is associated with gender information (e.g., red-female). However, little has been known on the effect of color on sex recognition of human bodies. This study aimed to investigate whether the color red could influence the categorization of human bodies by sex, and the effect of contextual information. Visual stimuli were created using body si...

The self is, at least partially, grounded in bodily processing. In particular, processing the physiological state of the body (i.e., interoception) plays a key role in self‐consciousness and the first‐person experience. The present study examined cultural differences in interoceptive processing. We focused on a behavioral measure of cardiac process...

Autism exhibits a wide range of developmental disabilities and is associated with aberrant anatomical and functional neural patterns. To detect autism in young children (4-7 years) in an automatic and non-invasive fashion, we have recorded magnetoencephalogram (MEG) signals from 30 autistic and 30 age-matched typically developing (TD) children. We...

Introduction Adults possess a natural inclination to associate sensory cues derived from distinct modalities, such as the pairing of sweet with pink. However, studies exploring crossmodal correspondences in children, particularly in the sensory pairing of visual features and tastes, are scant, leaving unanswered questions regarding the developmenta...

Throughout history, individuals believed to have extraordinary capabilities were generally highly ranked in their communities; this suggests a universal "extraordinary-dominant expectation" in human minds, which may play a key role in religious thought, even in modern societies. This study shows that 5-6-year-old children, who begin to understand r...

Two experiments were conducted to investigate perceptual judg ment and choice of apertures in a virtual environment. In both experiments, we showed participants two apertures of the same width consisting of three human-like objects on a computer screen. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to judge which apertures they perceived to be wider. In...

Colors have been reported to be associated with genders (e.g., reddish color-females). Here, we investigated color-gender associations (red-female/green-male) among Japanese participants using two Stroop-word categorization tasks. Ten Japanese gendered words were chosen as visual stimuli. In Experiment 1 (N = 23), participants were instructed to in...

The subjective truth of a statement is boosted by mere exposure to itself or a part of itself. This phenomenon is referred to as the illusory truth effect. We examined whether subliminal pre-exposure to the statement topic would increase its subjective truth. In the exposure phase, participants observed the topic, which was presented supraliminally...

Non-synesthetes exhibit a tendency to associate specific shapes with particular colors (i.e., circle–red, triangle–yellow, and square–blue). Such color–shape associations (CSAs) could potentially affect the feature binding of colors and shapes, thus resulting in people reporting more binding errors in the case of incongruent, rather than congruent,...

Color carries gender information (e.g., red-female). This study explored whether background color could influence the gender categorization of human faces. Visual stimuli were generated from faces whose sexually dimorphic content was morphed monotonically from female to male perception. The face stimulus was presented upright (Experiment 1) and inv...

Objective: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder, and identifying early autism biomarkers plays a vital role in improving detection and subsequent life outcomes. This study aims to reveal hidden biomarkers in the patterns of functional brain connectivity as recorded by the neuro-magnetic brain responses in childre...

Each basic taste can be perceived differently due to stored knowledge and differences in receptor properties. Depending on how these tastes are perceived, eating behavior may change. In this study, we examined the relationships between subjective feelings of taste perception, taste preferences, and autistic traits with the behavior of adding flavor...

Non-synesthetes exhibit a tendency to associate specific shapes with particular colors (i.e., circle-red, triangle-yellow, and square-blue). Here, we used two Go/No-go tasks to examine the congruency priming effect of color-shape associations on recognition efficiency of color and shape features. At the beginning of each trial, a target color or sh...

Temporal expectations are essential for appropriately interacting with the environment, but they can be biased. This tendency, called central bias, places higher weights on expected rather than actual duration distributions when perceiving incoming sensory stimuli. In particular, the central bias is strengthened in order to decrease total response...

Two versions of the flash grab illusion were used to examine the relative contributions of motion before and motion after the test flash to the illusory position shift. The stimulus in the first two experiments was a square pattern that expanded and contracted with an outline square flashed each time the motion reversed producing a dramatic differe...

A novel stimulus embedded in a sequence of repeated stimuli is often perceived to be longer in duration. Studies have indicated the involvement of repetition suppression in this duration distortion, but it remains unclear which processing stages are important. The present study examined whether high-level visual category processing contributes to t...

In this study, we aimed to find biomarkers of autism in young children. We recorded magnetoencephalography (MEG) in thirty children (4–7 years) with autism and thirty age, gender-matched controls while they were watching cartoons. We focused on characterizing neural oscillations by amplitude (power spectral density, PSD) and phase (preferred phase...

Non-synesthetes exhibit a tendency to associate specific shapes with particular colors (i.e., circle–red, triangle–yellow, and square–blue). Such color–shape associations (CSAs) could potentially affect the feature binding of colors and shapes, thus resulting in people reporting more binding errors in the case of incongruent, rather than congruent,...

Previous studies showed stereotyped color-gender associations (e.g., red/pink is female, and blue/green is male). Here, we investigated the automaticity of color-gender associations using two Stroop-word categorization tasks. Ten Japanese gendered words were chosen as visual stimuli. In Experiment 1, participants were instructed to indicate whether...

Non-synesthetes exhibit a tendency to associate specific shapes with particular colors (i.e., circle–red, triangle–yellow, and square–blue). Here, we used two Go/No-go tasks to examine the congruency priming effect of color-shape associations on recognition efficiency of color and shape features. At the beginning of each trial, a target color or sh...

Color carries gender information (e.g., red–female, blue–male). This study explored whether red background color could influence the gender categorization of human faces. Visual stimuli were generated from faces whose sexually dimorphic content was morphed monotonically from female to male perception. The face stimulus was presented upright (Experi...

Color carries gender information (e.g., red–female/blue–male). This study explored whether red could bias sex categorization of human bodies. Visual stimuli were created from body silhouettes that varied along the waist-to-hip ratio from female to male perception, combined with the red, green, and gray colors that were used as body color (Exp. 1) a...

Red color signals dominance in both non-human primates and humans. This study examined whether red background color influences the perception of dominance of human faces. Face stimuli were computer-generated faces whose dominance dimension was morphed monotonically from obedient to dominant. The face stimulus was presented with three background col...

Non-synesthetes exhibit a tendency to associate specific shapes with particular colors (i.e., circle–red, triangle–yellow, and square–blue). Here, we used two Go/No-go tasks to examine the congruency priming effect of color-shape associations on recognition efficiency of color and shape features. At the beginning of each trial, a target color or sh...

Previous studies showed stereotyped color-gender associations (e.g., red/pink is female, and blue/green is male). Here, we investigated the automaticity of color-gender associations using two Stroop-word categorization tasks. Ten Japanese gendered words were chosen as visual stimuli. In Experiment 1, participants were instructed to indicate whether...

Previous studies showed stereotyped color-gender associations (e.g., red/pink is female, and blue/green is male). Here, we investigated the automaticity of color-gender associations using two Stroop-word categorization tasks. Ten Japanese gendered words were chosen as visual stimuli. In Experiment 1 ( N = 23), participants were instructed to indica...

Non-synesthetes exhibit a tendency to associate specific shapes with particular colors (i.e., circle–red, triangle–yellow, and square–blue). Such color–shape associations (CSAs) could potentially affect the feature binding of colors and shapes, thus resulting in people reporting more binding errors in the case of incongruent, rather than congruent,...

Non-synesthetes exhibit a tendency to associate specific shapes with particular colors (i.e., circle–red, triangle–yellow, and square–blue). Such color–shape associations (CSAs) could potentially affect the feature binding of colors and shapes, thus resulting in people reporting more binding errors in the case of incongruent, rather than congruent,...

People are typically faster to categorize the race of a face if it belongs to a race different from their own. This Other Race Categorization Advantage (ORCA) is thought to reflect an enhanced sensitivity to the visual race signals of other race faces, leading to faster response times. The current study investigated this sensitivity in a cross-cult...

Actions shape what we see and memorize. A previous study suggested the interaction between motor and memory systems by showing that memory encoding for task-irrelevant items was enhanced when presented with motor-response cues. However, in the studies on the attentional boost effect, it has been revealed that detection of the target stimulus can le...

Color carries gender information (e.g., red–female/blue–male). This study explored whether red could bias sex categorization of human bodies. Visual stimuli were created from body silhouettes that varied along the waist-to-hip ratio from female to male perception, combined with the red, green, and gray colors that were used as body color (Exp. 1) a...

Color is associated with gender information (e.g., red-female). This study aimed to investigate whether the color red could influence the categorization of human bodies by sex. Visual stimuli were created using body silhouettes with varying along the waist-to-hip ratio from female to male perceptions. These stimuli were presented in conjunction wit...

Reading the genuineness of facial expressions is important for increasing the credibility of information conveyed by faces. However, it remains unclear which spatio-temporal characteristics of facial movements serve as critical cues to the perceived genuineness of facial expressions. This study focused on observable spatio-temporal differences betw...

Acquisition of fear memories enhances survival especially when the memories guide defensive movements to minimize harm. Accordingly, fear memories and body movements have tight relationships in animals: Fear memory acquisition results in adapting reactive defense movements, while training active defense movements to avoid threat reduces fear memory...

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder exhibit atypical taste perception and eating behaviours. However, little is known about the effect of autistic traits on eating behaviours in the general population. This study explored the relationships between autistic traits, taste preferences, taste perceptions, and eating behaviours among Japanese popu...

Verbal hints can bias perceptual decision-making, even when the information they provide is false. What makes individuals more or less susceptible to such influences, however, remains unclear. Here, we inquire whether suggestibility to social influence, a high-level trait measured by a standard suggestibility scale, could predict changes in percept...

Accumulating evidence suggests that deficits in perceptual inference account for symptoms of schizophrenia. One manifestation of perceptual inference is the central bias, i.e., the tendency to put emphasis on prior experiences over actual events in perceiving incoming sensory stimuli. Using an interval reproduction task, this study aimed to determi...

Although results of many psychology studies have shown that sharing emotion achieves dyadic interaction, no report has explained a study of the transmission of authentic information from emotional expressions that can strengthen perceivers. For this study, we used computational modeling, which is a multinomial processing tree, for formal quantifica...

The exploration of personality factors to explain individual differences in religiosity has demonstrated a link between empathic concern and religious beliefs using the Empathic Concern subscale of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI-EC). Research in the cognitive science of religion emphasized the role of empathizing ability related to mentali...

Neural interactions between upper and lower limbs underlie motor coordination in humans. Specifically, upper limb voluntary muscle contraction can facilitate spinal and corticospinal excitability of the lower limb muscles. However, little remains known on the involvement of somatosensory information in arm‐leg neural interactions. Here, we investig...