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In ostensive-inferential communication, the speaker’s communicative intention must be explicitly presented to the listener, which can be done with both verbal and nonverbal cues. Pointing gesture is an important tool in human ostensive communication. Its interpretation and potential roles in human evolution, however, have not yet been explored. When people produce referential actions, more effortful referential actions may promote different interpretations in the recipient than facile, less effortful actions. In this study, the experimenter demonstrated an effortful pointing, and the participant interpreted its meaning. When effortful pointing was used (i.e., pointing that entails touching an object while tilting one’s body forward looking directly at the stimulus), participants thought that a part of the object was being indicated rather than the whole object. This study discussed the relationship between these findings and pedagogy on stone-tool making.

The empirical study of word learning is driven by a theoretical debate between lexical constraint and social-pragmatic accounts; it has still not been determined which of these two best explains the evidence. We investigated whether the markedness of a pointing accompanying a verbal reference could help to learn a part name. Participants were 35 two-and-a-half-year-olds, 42 four-and-a-half-year-olds, and 38 undergraduate university students in Japan. The experimenter pointed to a novel part (embedded in a novel whole object) with either “marked” pointing, which was touching the part with a small circular motion, or with usual pointing. Touch accompanied by circular motion reliably elicited learning of part names in all age groups. Usual distal pointing without motion reliably elicited learning of whole object names. The pattern of findings rejects a whole-object constraint in early word learning and demonstrates that marked pointing can promote learning novel part names, supporting a social-pragmatic account.

Learning part names, such as hands of a clock, can be a challenge for children because of the whole object assumption; that is, a child will assume that a given label refers to the whole object (e.g., a clock) rather than the object part (e.g., hands of a clock). We examined the effect of gaze shifting and deliberate pointing on learning part names. The experiment consisted of 2 conditions: (a) no-shifting and (b) shifting-to-object. No-shifting was when the experimenter continuously looked at the participant's face after establishing mutual gaze even while pointing at an object part to teach the part name. The shifting-to-object condition was the same as the no-shifting condition, except for the experimenter's gaze shifting to the object when teaching part names. The results showed that 4-and-a-half-year-olds and adults correctly inferred a part name only during gaze shifting. Two-and-a-half-year-olds were not yet sensitive to this ostensive flow. Especially while learning part names, a continuous gaze at the face may violate the quantity maxim-that is, the criterion that the speaker must provide the appropriate amount of information-in Grice's cooperative principle. To utilize ostensive signals in learning part names, children need to notice the combination of gaze direction and ostensive signals, such as a pointing gesture. In 4-and-a-half-year-olds, the use of social-pragmatic information is more advanced, allowing them to understand an adult's pointing gesture when gaze shifting occurs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The purpose of this research is to verify that the proposed method, which generates vibro-stimuli according to the distance variation, has a capability of supporting depth edge detection for aperture localization. We have proposed a method to support the visually impaired understanding their surrounding environment via modality conversion from distance variation to haptic vibration information, and have developed the wearable device to provide the user with vibro-stimuli generated from visual variation inspired by optical flow characteristics. The characteristic of this vibration stimulus is that the user feels a strong vibration when the distance difference per unit time is large. It is inferred that this feature is effective in perceiving the boundary of obstacles, i.e., depth edge, which may contribute to the user's aperture localization. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, an aperture localization experiment was conducted to compare it with the ETAslike conventional method by changing the number of vibration motors and the method of vibration stimuli. We asked six blindfolded subjects to guess the location of the aperture. The experimental results showed that the proposed method achieved using a single motor a 98.3% correct rate. The contributions of this research are to propose the way of vibrostimuli based on distance variation for aperture localization, which is one of the important environmental elements, and to validate its effectiveness.

The purpose of this research is to propose the method providing the visually impaired users with environment understanding via modality conversion from visual distance to haptic vibration information. According to studies on ecological perception, optical flow, which represents dynamical visual variation, plays significant roles in environment understanding for human. We have developed a head-mounted wearable device equipped with a 2-dimensional distance sensor and five vibro-motors arranged around the head. The vibration magnitude of vibro-motors is defined as not static distance to the obstacle but dynamic distance variation caused from the user movement. The vibro-stimuli are generated based on the optical flow characteristics. Thus, if the user moves to the obstacle dynamically, the user feels stronger vibration; in contrast, if the user pauses, the user feels no vibration since the distance to obstacles keeps constant. To evaluate basic performance of the proposed method, we asked five blindfolded subjects to walk toward the wall 50 times each. First 10 trials performed by each subject are considered as practice phase; hence, the remaining 40 trials are evaluated. In total 200 trials, the 97.5% of trials are considered as success ones; the almost subjects were able to perceive the wall existence and stopped without the collision with the wall. The experiment demonstrated the basic validity of our proposed method. The main contribution of this paper is utilizing dynamic distance variation to determine vibration magnitude and providing the user with vibro-stimuli simulated by optical flow to support the user’s localization in the environment.

It is known that a phrase may have multiple meanings. Phrases such as “green tea cup” may be interpreted with two different meanings—a “green-colored tea cup” or a “cup of green tea.” Then how people know the exact meanings of apparently syntactically ambiguous linguistic expressions? We propose that gesture that accompanies speech may help disambiguate syntactically ambiguous structures. The present study investigated whether the difference in phrase structures influences the production of gestures. Participants produced gestures as they produced a Japanese four-word phrases. We examined all possible synchronization patterns of speech and gestures. We found, for the first time, gestures tended to synchronize with the chunks of words that form a constituent in syntactic structures. Our study suggests that gestures may play an important role in disambiguating syntactically ambiguous phrases. This could be a reason why humans have continuously used gestures even after they acquired a powerful tool of language and why today, they still produce language-redundant gestures.

Assisted hatching (AH) is an artificial disruption of the zona pellucida with the aim of facilitating embryo implantation. We used time-lapse observations of mouse embryos to examine the effect of AH in mouse blastocysts. AH techniques were performed with acid Tyrode’s solution. We compared the rates of blastocyst formation and blastocyst attachment to Ishikawa cells between the control (n = 28) and the AH group (n = 24). To analyze the effects of AH, 8-cell mice embryos were cultured under time-lapse observations (every 15 min). The time required for hatching, the hatching rates, the frequency of contraction, and the contraction rates in the blastocysts were analyzed. There were no significant differences between the two groups in hatching rate or attachment rate. The times required for hatching were 286 ± 22 min in the AH group and 990 ± 437 min in the control group (P = 0.018). The contraction frequencies in blastocysts were 3.5 ± 0.7 times in the AH group and 7.5 ± 2.5 times in the control group (P = 0.020). From the time-lapse observations we found that the time required for hatching and the frequency of contraction in blastocysts were both reduced by AH, although blastocyst formation and attachment were not affected.

The regioselective intramolecular 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition of the phenylsulfonylallene-nitrone derivatives has been developed. This reaction showed that the distal double bond of the allene exclusively reacted with the nitrone group to produce the bicyclic isoxazolidine derivatives regardless of the substitution pattern on the allenyl moiety.

To assess the effects of light from an integrated optical microscope and evaluate the safety of time-lapse observations using a built-in microscope incubator.We prospectively compared the fertilization rate and embryonic morphology after intracytoplasmic sperm injection between embryos cultured with time-lapse observations every 15 min in an incubator with an integrated optical microscope and embryos with intermittent observations (once a day) in conventional incubators.No significant differences were observed in the fertilization rate (57.5% vs. 57.5%) or the rate of excellent-good cleavage embryos (36.0% vs. 36.0%).These results suggest that time-lapse observations using an incubator with an integrated optical microscope may therefore be safely utilized in clinical practice.

Social ability seems to play a major role in the ontogeny of language. Human babies are already sensitive to adults' eye gaze, and follow it at an early age. At the first year of life, they begin to redirect the adults' attention and actively establish joint attention with caregivers and other important adults. They then use the established joint attention to guess meanings of words they hear. Later, children further show socio-pragmatic ability at a higher level to guess word meanings. They still use joint attention but they may not depend upon joint attention in some situations. Flow-of-conversation and guessing others' internal conditions can also give important cues for language development.

畜産食品中に残留するペニシリン系抗生物質（PCs），セファロスポリン系抗生物質（CEs），テトラサイクリン系抗生物質（TCs），マクロライド系抗生物質（MLs），アミノグリコシド系抗生物質（AGs），キノロン系抗菌剤（QNs）などを中心とした，より多くの抗菌性物質を一括して検出できる微生物学的試験法を検討した．畜産食品から0.5% メタリン酸-メタノール-アセトニトリル（6 : 2 : 2）で除タンパクと同時に薬物を抽出し，ポリマー系逆相カートリッジOasis HLBを用いてクリーンアップする前処理法を構築した．各グループから代表的薬剤を選び，残留基準値レベルで添加回収実験を行った結果，明瞭な阻止円が観測され，回収率はおおむね70% 以上であった．本法は，動物用医薬品として汎用され，畜産食品中に残留する可能性の高いPCs，CEs，MLs，TCs，AGs，QNsを簡易かつ高感度に検出することが可能であり，抗菌性物質の残留の有無を簡便に判定できる有効な方法であると思われる．

高速液体クロマトグラフィー/質量分析法（LC/MS）を用いた魚介類及び食肉中のノニルフェノール（4-NP）及びオクチルフェノール（4-OP）の簡易かつ迅速な定量法を検討した．前処理は，メタノールで抽出し，マルチモードカートリッジを用いて試験溶液を調製した．LC/MS条件は，4-NP，4-OP共ネガティブモードを用い，測定は脱プロトン化分子（m/z 205.1，219.1）を用いた選択イオン検出（selected ion monitoring，SIM）法を採用した．移動相は揮発性の酢酸（0.005%）及び酢酸アンモニウム（1 mM）を用いることにより，感度良く検出できた．SIM法による検量線はいずれも0.5∼50 ng/mLの範囲で良好な直線性を示した．本法による10 ng/g添加時の回収率は72.1∼89.6%，標準偏差は10% 以内であった．本法による検出限界は0.5∼2 ng/gであった．本法を用いて市販魚介類及び食肉についてNP及びOPの汚染実態調査を実施したところ，シジミ，ツブ貝等から微量の4-NPが検出された．

We have performed basic experiments for the purpose of applying onomatopoeia to engineering problems. In these experiments, test subjects were made to perform lifting actions while listening to onomatopoeic utterances. We thereby demonstrated that there is a relationship between the onomatopoeic utterances and the lifting forces exerted by the test subjects. We examined how the lifting forces are related to the envelope of onomatopoeic utterances. Furthermore, we investigated how the lifting force is affected depending on whether or not emotion is expressed when uttering the onomatopoeia.