Susumu Harizuka

Hemifacial differences in the in‐group advantage in emotion recognition

Some researchers have interpreted findings of in‐group advantage in emotion judgements as ethnic bias by perceivers. This study is the first linking in‐group advantage to subtle differences in emotional expressions, using composites created with left and right facial hemispheres. Participants from the USA, India, and Japan judged facial expressions from all three cultures. As predicted, in‐group advantage was greater for left than right hemifacial composites. Left composites were not universally more recognisable, but relatively more recognisable to in‐group members only. There was greater pancultural agreement about the recognition levels of right hemifacial composites. This suggests the left facial hemisphere uses an expressive style less universal and more culturally specific than the right, and that bias alone does not cause the in‐group advantage.

Cooperative Learning-Based Approach and Development of Learning Awareness and Achievement in Mathematics in Elementary School

Elementary school students (control group: n = 30, experimental group: n = 30) were introduced to a cooperative learning-based approach in a pre-post design. Development of learning awareness and performance on achievement task were the dependent measures. The cooperative learning-based approach of the experimental group induced significantly greater learning awareness and better performance on an achievement task than for the control group who had undergone the regular lecture-and-demonstration method on the same topic.

Pattern of social interaction in societies of the Asia-Pacific region.

The authors developed an 18-item Social Interaction Inventory that yielded a factorial structure based on the 3 domains of social interaction: interpersonal, personal, and extrapersonal. They administered the inventory to samples from 15 countries of the Asia-Pacific region (N = 146). The participants in the different cultural groups preferred to interact more within the interpersonal (in-group) domain as compared with the personal (individual) and extrapersonal (out-group) domains. The findings reflect a collective pattern, rather than an individualistic pattern, of social interaction in the societies of the Asia-Pacific region.

Bereavement, Cognitive-Emotional Processing, and Coping With the Loss: A Study of Indian and Japanese Students

Campus suicides have increased manifold across academic institutions, often leaving unresolved bereavement issues in these institutions, primarily because students are supposed to carry on with their daily activities with little or no time and attention paid to this necessary process. In this study, the role of cognitive-emotional processes in coping, especially when one is grieving a death, was investigated through a comparison between 40 bereaved Japanese and Indian female college students. The participants were assessed for resilience, cognitive-emotional regulation, posttraumatic cognition, and coping strategies in the aftermath of the suicide death of someone close. Positive reappraisal mediated the relationship between resilience and proactive coping, whereas negative cognitions about the self mediated the relationship between resilience and proactive as well as reflective coping. The participants from the two cultures differed significantly on resilience, with Indians scoring higher than Japanese young adults. The findings are analyzed in light of the coping with distressful life events model and could have possible implications for social workers and/or mental health professionals in terms of acceptability of interventions.

Responses of low-IQ students on the learning awareness questionnaire compared to students matched on mental and chronological age.

Learning awareness, including semantic content, response strategy, processing strategy, summarization, and memory in the classroom, were examined in students with mental retardation. From urban schools in Japan special high school students with average IQ of 60 (n = 40) and students with normal intellectual capacity matched on mental (n = 40) and chronological age (n = 40) were administered a 16-item Learning Awareness Questionnaire. Students of low IQ on the Tanaka-Binet test obtained lower scores on semantic content and memory strategies than chronological or mental age-matched controls, but not on response and processing. Scores indicated that students of low IQ may be equally aware of learning processes related to response and processing strategies.