Masami K Yamaguchi
Biographic Data
| ID | 6267339 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Masami K Yamaguchi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Masami K |
| FAMILY NAME | Yamaguchi |
| SIGNATURE | YAMAGUCHI M K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Chuo University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5521-061X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Spatial representation of serial order in working memory
The spontaneous spatialization of serial order in working memory (WM), often reflected by the SPoARC effect, is thought to be influenced by reading/writing habits. However, cross-cultural research comparing the direction of spatial organization in WM remains limited. Here we investigated the spontaneity of this spatialization (its independence from visual-spatial prompts) and its generalizability across different cultural reading systems (Italian…
Metacontrast masking is ineffective in the first 6 months of life
Metacontrast masking is one of the most widely studied types of visual masking, in which a visual stimulus is rendered invisible by a subsequent mask that does not spatially overlap with the target. Metacontrast has been used for many decades as a tool to study visual processing and conscious perception in adults. However, there are so far no infant studies on metacontrast and it remains unknown even whether it occurs in infants. The present stud…
Attentional blink in preverbal infants
Primary cognitive processes, such as spatial attention, are essential to our higher cognitive abilities and develop dramatically in the first year of life. The spatial aspect of infants' working memory is equivalent to that of adults. However, it is unclear whether this is true for the temporal domain. Thus, we investigated the temporal aspect of infants' working memory using an attentionally demanding task by focusing on the attentional blink ef…
Hemodynamic response to familiar faces in children with ADHD
BACKGROUND: School-age children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have difficulties in interpersonal relationships, in addition to impaired facial expression perception and recognition. For successful social interactions, the ability to discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar faces is critical. However, there are no published reports on the recognition of familiar and unfamiliar faces by children with ADHD. METHODS: We eva…
Infants’ recognition of subtle anger facial expression
Infants’ recognition of facial expressions develops during postnatal life. Previous studies have showed that infants learned to discriminate the facial expression of basic emotions such as happy or angry expressions by approximately 7 months of age. Although infants’ recognition of intense expressions has been demonstrated, their recognition of subtle expressions is unclear. The present study examined whether 6‐ to 7‐month‐old infants recognize t…
The effect of eye size on discriminating faces
Infants' ability to recognize uncanny human faces increases during the first year of life. In turn, their ability to recognize faces of other species declines at almost the same period (perceptual narrowing). In the current study, we aimed to clarify the relationship between the perception of uncanniness of faces and perceptual narrowing in infants and adults. We used the “uncanny valley task,” in which the participants were required to discrimin…
Shedding light on painters' implicit knowledge
We aimed to verify painters' empirical rules in painting portraits from the perspective of face perception. In particular, we examined the effects of lighting on perceiving impressions and facial expressions of a depicted person by using portrait paintings with various lighting conditions of contrast (high, low) and position (left, right). Viewers rated their impressions of the people in the portraits and those people's expressions using 7‐point …
Two‐ to three‐month‐old infants prefer moving face patterns to moving top‐heavy patterns
Newborn infants prefer face‐like patterns over non‐face‐like patterns. This preference is explained by newborns' preference for a “top‐heavy” configuration, that is, for geometric patterns that have more elements in the upper part than in the lower part of the configuration ( S imion, V alenza, M acchi C assia, T urati, & U miltà, 2002). However, for 3‐month‐old infants, face preference cannot be explained only by a preference for “top‐heaviness”…
Infant visual preference for fruit enhanced by congruent in-season odor
Amodal completion in infants
A visual pattern's orientation influences how adults amodally complete that pattern. We examined whether this is also the case with infants using Markovich's pattern, consisting of a black polygon partially occluded by a gray disc, which is completed as either a vertically symmetrical hexagon or as a pentagon, depending on the pattern's orientation. Our experiment consisted of two prefamiliarization test trials, six familiarization trials, and tw…
Perception of the Ebbinghaus illusion in 5‐ to 8‐month‐old infants
The Ebbinghaus illusion is a geometric illusion based on a size‐contrast between a central circle and surrounding circles. A central circle surrounded by small inducing circles is perceived as being larger than a central circle surrounded by large inducing circles. In the present study we investigated 5‐ to 8‐month‐old infants' perception of the Ebbinghaus illusion using a preferential‐looking paradigm. We measured the preference between a centra…
Infants' perception of human body orientation and the effect of a surrounding square
We examined two hypotheses about infants' perception of orientation. The first is that infants develop an expectation that the human body is normally vertical. To examine this hypothesis, we compared the preferential looking to vertical and oblique versions of a silhouette of a human body, to an inverted body, and to a grating. Our second hypothesis is that presenting a figure inside a frame affects the perception of orientation. To examine the s…
How do infants utilize radial optic flow for their motor actions
Radial optic flow is one of the crucial cues for the perception of motion‐in‐depth and contributes to our daily adaptive actions such as locomotion or postural control. Although many researchers have examined the development of radial motion perception and that of adaptive motor actions, no valid developmental model for visuo‐motor coordination has been proposed. In the present study, we tried to propose a developmental framework for the interact…
Learning unfamiliar faces in infants
We investigated the effect of the regular sequence of different views and the three-quarter view effect on the learning of unfamiliar faces by infants. 3–8-month-old infants were familiarized with unfamiliar female faces in either the regular condition (presenting 11 different face views from the frontal view to the left-side profile view in regular order) or the random condition (presenting the same 11 different face views in random order). Foll…
Asymmetry in the detection of shapes from shading in infants 1
We investigated 3‐ and 4‐month‐old infants’ sensitivity to differences defined by shading using a paired‐comparison familiarity/novelty preference procedure. Infants were familiarized with a pair of displays consisting of homogeneous shaded disks, and then were tested with two displays: the familiar display and a novel one containing shaded disks with reversed polarity (defined as the target). Experiment 1 examined two assumptions on discerning s…
Young infants’ sensitivity to shading stimuli with radial motion 1
The purpose of this study was to examine 5‐month‐old infant's sensitivity to a shading cue with radial motion. Our stimuli were radially expanding or contracting circles with vertical or horizontal shadings. We tested infants’ preference for vertical (top‐ and bottom‐lit) and horizontal (left‐ and right‐lit) shadings. The results indicate that infants tested with the vertical shading showed significant preference for the top‐lit shading, whereas …
Do infant Japanese macaques ( Macaca fuscata ) categorize objects without specific training?
Development of social cognition in infant chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes )
In this paper, we summarize a series of studies on the developmental changes in social cognition in mother‐raised infant chimpanzees from birth to around 2 years old. The infants preferentially tracked a photograph of their mother's face at 1 month but showed indifferent preferences to faces at 2 months old. This change in facial recognition was correlated with a decrease in neonatal spontaneous smiling, increase in social smiling and a decline i…
Do infant Japanese macaques ( Macaca fuscata ) categorize objects without specific training?
Development of social cognition in infant chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes )
In this paper, we summarize a series of studies on the developmental changes in social cognition in mother‐raised infant chimpanzees from birth to around 2 years old. The infants preferentially tracked a photograph of their mother's face at 1 month but showed indifferent preferences to faces at 2 months old. This change in facial recognition was correlated with a decrease in neonatal spontaneous smiling, increase in social smiling and a decline i…
Young infants’ sensitivity to shading stimuli with radial motion 1
The purpose of this study was to examine 5‐month‐old infant's sensitivity to a shading cue with radial motion. Our stimuli were radially expanding or contracting circles with vertical or horizontal shadings. We tested infants’ preference for vertical (top‐ and bottom‐lit) and horizontal (left‐ and right‐lit) shadings. The results indicate that infants tested with the vertical shading showed significant preference for the top‐lit shading, whereas …
Asymmetry in the detection of shapes from shading in infants 1
We investigated 3‐ and 4‐month‐old infants’ sensitivity to differences defined by shading using a paired‐comparison familiarity/novelty preference procedure. Infants were familiarized with a pair of displays consisting of homogeneous shaded disks, and then were tested with two displays: the familiar display and a novel one containing shaded disks with reversed polarity (defined as the target). Experiment 1 examined two assumptions on discerning s…
Perception of the Ebbinghaus illusion in 5‐ to 8‐month‐old infants
The Ebbinghaus illusion is a geometric illusion based on a size‐contrast between a central circle and surrounding circles. A central circle surrounded by small inducing circles is perceived as being larger than a central circle surrounded by large inducing circles. In the present study we investigated 5‐ to 8‐month‐old infants' perception of the Ebbinghaus illusion using a preferential‐looking paradigm. We measured the preference between a centra…
Infants' perception of human body orientation and the effect of a surrounding square
We examined two hypotheses about infants' perception of orientation. The first is that infants develop an expectation that the human body is normally vertical. To examine this hypothesis, we compared the preferential looking to vertical and oblique versions of a silhouette of a human body, to an inverted body, and to a grating. Our second hypothesis is that presenting a figure inside a frame affects the perception of orientation. To examine the s…
How do infants utilize radial optic flow for their motor actions
Radial optic flow is one of the crucial cues for the perception of motion‐in‐depth and contributes to our daily adaptive actions such as locomotion or postural control. Although many researchers have examined the development of radial motion perception and that of adaptive motor actions, no valid developmental model for visuo‐motor coordination has been proposed. In the present study, we tried to propose a developmental framework for the interact…
Learning unfamiliar faces in infants
We investigated the effect of the regular sequence of different views and the three-quarter view effect on the learning of unfamiliar faces by infants. 3–8-month-old infants were familiarized with unfamiliar female faces in either the regular condition (presenting 11 different face views from the frontal view to the left-side profile view in regular order) or the random condition (presenting the same 11 different face views in random order). Foll…
Amodal completion in infants
A visual pattern's orientation influences how adults amodally complete that pattern. We examined whether this is also the case with infants using Markovich's pattern, consisting of a black polygon partially occluded by a gray disc, which is completed as either a vertically symmetrical hexagon or as a pentagon, depending on the pattern's orientation. Our experiment consisted of two prefamiliarization test trials, six familiarization trials, and tw…
Infant visual preference for fruit enhanced by congruent in-season odor
Two‐ to three‐month‐old infants prefer moving face patterns to moving top‐heavy patterns
Newborn infants prefer face‐like patterns over non‐face‐like patterns. This preference is explained by newborns' preference for a “top‐heavy” configuration, that is, for geometric patterns that have more elements in the upper part than in the lower part of the configuration ( S imion, V alenza, M acchi C assia, T urati, & U miltà, 2002). However, for 3‐month‐old infants, face preference cannot be explained only by a preference for “top‐heaviness”…
Infants’ recognition of subtle anger facial expression
Infants’ recognition of facial expressions develops during postnatal life. Previous studies have showed that infants learned to discriminate the facial expression of basic emotions such as happy or angry expressions by approximately 7 months of age. Although infants’ recognition of intense expressions has been demonstrated, their recognition of subtle expressions is unclear. The present study examined whether 6‐ to 7‐month‐old infants recognize t…
The effect of eye size on discriminating faces
Infants' ability to recognize uncanny human faces increases during the first year of life. In turn, their ability to recognize faces of other species declines at almost the same period (perceptual narrowing). In the current study, we aimed to clarify the relationship between the perception of uncanniness of faces and perceptual narrowing in infants and adults. We used the “uncanny valley task,” in which the participants were required to discrimin…
Shedding light on painters' implicit knowledge
We aimed to verify painters' empirical rules in painting portraits from the perspective of face perception. In particular, we examined the effects of lighting on perceiving impressions and facial expressions of a depicted person by using portrait paintings with various lighting conditions of contrast (high, low) and position (left, right). Viewers rated their impressions of the people in the portraits and those people's expressions using 7‐point …
Hemodynamic response to familiar faces in children with ADHD
BACKGROUND: School-age children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have difficulties in interpersonal relationships, in addition to impaired facial expression perception and recognition. For successful social interactions, the ability to discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar faces is critical. However, there are no published reports on the recognition of familiar and unfamiliar faces by children with ADHD. METHODS: We eva…
Attentional blink in preverbal infants
Primary cognitive processes, such as spatial attention, are essential to our higher cognitive abilities and develop dramatically in the first year of life. The spatial aspect of infants' working memory is equivalent to that of adults. However, it is unclear whether this is true for the temporal domain. Thus, we investigated the temporal aspect of infants' working memory using an attentionally demanding task by focusing on the attentional blink ef…
Metacontrast masking is ineffective in the first 6 months of life
Metacontrast masking is one of the most widely studied types of visual masking, in which a visual stimulus is rendered invisible by a subsequent mask that does not spatially overlap with the target. Metacontrast has been used for many decades as a tool to study visual processing and conscious perception in adults. However, there are so far no infant studies on metacontrast and it remains unknown even whether it occurs in infants. The present stud…
Spatial representation of serial order in working memory
The spontaneous spatialization of serial order in working memory (WM), often reflected by the SPoARC effect, is thought to be influenced by reading/writing habits. However, cross-cultural research comparing the direction of spatial organization in WM remains limited. Here we investigated the spontaneity of this spatialization (its independence from visual-spatial prompts) and its generalizability across different cultural reading systems (Italian…
Psychology (17 works) · Cognitive psychology (11 works) · Communication (9 works) · Developmental psychology (9 works) · Neuroscience (9 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Mathematics (7 works) · Visual perception and processing mechanisms (7 works) · Face Recognition and Perception (6 works) · Perception (6 works)