• Sleep Medicine and Psychophysiology
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.18-23
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• 2002

Alexithymia represents deficits in the cognitive processing and regulation of emotions. It is observed in many cases of psychosomatic disease, anorexia nervosa, panic disorder, depression etc. Many studies have shown that alexithymia is associated with maladaptive styles of emotion regulation, low emotional intelligence, interhemispheric transfer deficit, and reduced rapid eye movement density. Psychotherapies that enhance emotional awareness may be effective in alleviating the difficulties of alexithymic individuals. Aexithymia is useful for constructing the role of personality and emotions in the pathogenesis of psychiatric disorders. It may serve as a bridge between neurobiology and psychology. We review recent alexithymia theory and research and their implications for treatment of psychosomatic disorders.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.137-160
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• 2018

The present article reviews recent arguments on the moral-conventional distinction in moral judgment and discusses the implications for moral psychology research. Traditional research on moral judgment has considered both the evaluation of transgressive actions of others and the categorization of the norms on the moral-conventional dimension. Kohlberg, Piaget, and Turiel (1983) regard moral principles to be clearly distinguished from social-conventional norms and suggested criteria for the moral-conventional distinction. They assume that the moral domain should be specifically related to the value of care and justice, and the judgment for the moral transgression should be universal and objective. The cognitive developmental approach or social domain theory, which has been generally accepted by moral psychology researchers, is recently being challenged. In this article, we introduce three different approaches that criticize the assumptions for the moral-conventional distinction, namely, moral sentimentalism, moral parochialism, and moral pluralism. Moral sentimentalism emphasizes the role of emotion in moral judgment and suggests that moral and conventional norms can be continuously distributed on an affective-nonaffective dimension. Moral parochialism, based on the evidence from anthropology and cross-cultural psychology, asserts that norm transgression can be the object of moral judgment only when the action is relevant to the survival and reproduction of a group and the individuals within the group; judgment for moral transgression can be as relative as that for conventional transgression. Moral pluralism suggests multiple moral intuitions that vary with culture and individual, and questions the assumption of the social domain theory that morality is confined to care and justice. These new perspectives imply that the moral-conventional distinction may not properly tap into the nature of moral judgment and that further research is needed.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.69-82
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• 2019

Do animals have a mind? Our understanding about whether animals have minds depends on our relationship with animals, as we cannot determine animals' actual minds. These two studies presented here thus examined the meat paradox, that is, an inconsistency between love for animals and the act of enjoying eating meat in the context of mind perception. Study 1 examined whether mind perceptions toward various animals are classified on the basis of experience-related capacities, such as feeling pain, and agency-related capacities, such as having self-control. In Study 2, mind perceptions toward cows and sexually objectified women were classified on the basis of food condition and non-food condition. In the food condition (experimental condition), cows were portrayed as products for meat consumption, whereas in the control condition, they were described as animals living on a farm, eating grass. The results of Study 2 demonstrated revealed that mind perception was positively associated with how morally incorrect it was to eat animals. Study 2 thus demonstrated that the scores of mind perception toward cows and sexually objectified women in the experimental condition were significantly lower than those in the control condition. These reduced mind attribution in the experimental condition implied that people may be motivated to reduce cognitive dissonance between their attitudes toward animals, such as loving them, and their behaviors, such as, eating meat. In addition, these results suggest that objectification toward animals may impact the objectification and mind perception toward human beings as well. These findings highlight the role of dissonance reduction in the meat paradox and objectification theory so as to understand basic psychological processes involved while making moral choices in everyday life.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.29-52
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• 2005

This study was carried out to examine whether children had the naive psychological knowledge that the mental states ate requited to understand the intentional actions, whether their psychological knowledge was organized as a theory, and in what aspects the knowledge changed as children get older. Three- to 11-year-olds were presented with two types of tasks. In action explanation tasks, children were presented with simple descriptions of two characters engaging in specific actions and then asked to explain the characters' action. In action prediction tasks, they were told stories depicting a character's desire and belief and then asked to predict the action of the character. Three-year-olds explained the action in terms of abstract construct such as emotion, intention, and desire, and they predicted the character's action on the basis of her/his desire and explicit belief but not on the basis of inferred false belief and traits. In addition when they were asked to explain one mental state, they explained in terms of other mental states, suggesting the coherence of their knowledge. The present results suggested that even 3-year-olds' psychological knowledge was organized as a theory, in that it was used as a causal device in explaining and predicting human actions, and it had abstractness and coherence. Older children's knowledge was different from 3-year-olds' in that older children explained the action in terms of more complicated mental states such as beliefs and traits. The nature of the developmental change in psychological knowledge was discussed.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.25-36
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• 2018

Nowadays, it is hard to imagine one's life without smart phones or the internet. Furthermore, not only do people form groups offline, but also online. Based on the cognitive dissonance theory, there have been many studies about how an offline group's initiation affects attitudes toward the group. However, there has not been a study about how an online group's initiation can affect attitudes toward the group. Therefore, this study aims to find out how cognitive dissonance aroused by initiation affects the attitudes toward the online community, which represents groups that are formed online. In addition, this study examined how perceived similarity affects changes in attitude aroused by cognitive dissonance. Participants were assigned to a group in three ways as follows: without a registration process, with a simple registration process, and/or with a complex registration process. Perceived similarity was calculated by the difference between the current body mass index (BMI) and the target BMI of the participant. Attitudes toward the online group were measured by perceived source credibility, perceived information quality, satisfaction, information usefulness, and continuance intention. Contrary to the cognitive dissonance theory, the results showed that when applied to offline social groups, there were conflicting results. There were cases where there was no difference in the evaluation between initiation conditions. However, other cases showed that groups with the most complex registration process were found to have the worst evaluation. People were more favorable toward the group when the perceived similarity was larger. Interestingly, people who had higher perceived similarity had more positive attitudes toward the groups that had been assigned with a registration process compared to the group formed without a registration process. Conversely, people with lower perceived similarity had more positive attitudes toward the group when there was no initiation process. Online communities may use the results of this study to design more suitable registration processes for their communities.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.281-292
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to identify the effect of gesture and facial expression on persona effects. Fifty-six college students were recruited for this study, and non-verbal communication skills were applied to a pedagogical agent with gesture (conversational vs. deictic) and facial expression. The conversational gesture may have relationship with social interaction hypothesis of pedagogical agent while the deictic gesture may have relationship with attentional guidance hypothesis. The facial expression can be assumed to facilitate the social interaction between the pedagogical agent and learners. Interestingly, the conversational gesture group showed a tendency of outperforming the deictic gesture group. It may imply that the social interaction theory has a strong impact on cognitive support as well as social interaction for learners. There was a significant interaction effect on the engagement when both of facial expression and conversational gesture were applied. This result has two implications. First, facial expression can facilitate the persona effect for engagement.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.73-87
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• 2003

This research extends a general theory of human cognition to an applied domain of piloting skills. We examined how fast and accurately pilots achieve and maintain situation awareness in flight by measuring their consistency judgment between a written statement describing a flight situation and a cockpit display showing a current state of an aircraft. The goal of this research is to determine whether situation awareness is influenced by expertise level as a Auction of two different kinds of flight situation variables. It was revealed that flight situation variables representing relations between flight elements had an effect on situation awareness. Working memory was found to play a critical role in integrating a variety of flight information form multiple sources. It was also revealed that flight situation variables representing the contents of flight elements had influence on situation awareness in flight. These results were explained in a theoretical framework of a construction-integration model to reveal the cognitive processes underlying situation awareness in flight.

• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.559-574
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to develop the couple relationship improvement program for college students and to examine the effects of the program based on the family of origin and attachment. Does based on Bowen's theory of differentiation of self, adult attachment, group counseling for this and establishes program goals according to systematic group counseling program development model and composed program. In order to attain like this research objective, six male and female couples attending colleges were divided into the participating group and comparison group; the students were from H University in Daejeon, Korea, and they had the experience of participating in the comprehensive group program. The changes shown by the couples were studied, and the cases were analyzed by examining the minutes and reports, which supplemented the quantitative analysis of the effectiveness of the group counseling program. The analysis of the effectiveness of the program showed the following. The case showed that goals of the individuals and couples, enhancing the understanding of self and partners by understanding the self-differentiation and adult attachment while having a positive impact on understanding, acceptance, disclosure of self partner and couple relationship based on the social support of the cognitive emotion regulation strategies.

• Journal of Korean Medical classics
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.39-42
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• 2009

Jeongji(情志) in Chinese medicine refers to a series of psychological activity which is expressed as hui(喜), no(怒), wu(優), sa(思), bi(悲), gong(恐), gyeong(驚), together with emotion, sentiment, and cognition, which are manifested as responses of the human body to environmental changes both inside and outside. Sa(思) is a major cognitive activity, and the other six emotions are main emotional activities. The emphasis on the interrelationship between cognition, sentiment, and emotional activity is a unique characteristic of the Jeongji(情志) concept in China. Jeongji[Mental] disorder refers to a series of diseases that has a close link between the attack, clinical presentation and emotional stimulation. The attack is deeply affected by emotional stimulation, with which physical symptoms are either present or absent. However, emotional changes are clear most of the time, their effect on disease development noticeable as well. To sum up, Jeongji[Mental] disorder is related to a wide range of medical problems in fields such as internal, surgical, gynecology, pediatrics, and various psychiatric disorders, not to mention contemporary psychological disorders, neurosis, and all kinds of mental illnesses of today. Moreover, the mental and physical disorders of today all share a common pathogenesis, clinical manifestation and treatment discipline. All the more reason for deeper professional research.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.95-104
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• 2017

This study aims to develop a reliable and valid Geriatric Reaction Inventory-Simplified Form (GRI-SF). Reaction inventory for measuring anger (Evans & Stangelang, 1971) is an assessment tool in a view of stimuli for measuring the level of anger invoked from the anger-triggered experiences. Yet, the inventory, comprised of 76 items, is sometimes incapable of finishing up the lengthy questionnaire. In the sense, a simplified form of RI is necessary for those lacks cognitive ability such as stroke patients or the elderly. In study 1, a full version of Reaction Inventory was given for the elder who are above 60, and ten items out of 76 was selected to form GRI-SF based on the psychometric theory. In study 2, the reliability and validity of GRI-SF was tested by another sample group of elderly with some additional examinations. The reliability was good with Cronbach's alpha of 0.79. Based on the fact that GRI-SF measures the personal trait anger, GRI-SF should not be only strong correlation with the scores of trait anger strongly, but be less correlated with scores representing other aspects of anger. As a result, GRI-SF score showed strong correlations with trait anger among other sub-categories of State-Trait Expression Inventory (STAXI), and was less correlated with anger-out score which reflects behavioral aspect of anger. Moreover, it is less correlated (r=.41) with hostility representing attitudinal or cognitive aspects of anger. Consequently, GRI-SF, constructed by this research, is verified to be a reliable and valid tool for anger measurement.