Psycho-Space Project

My current research focuses on spatial perception, primarily from a mathematical psychology perspective.

Perception refers to the process of capturing external information, specifically through our senses—touch, hearing, sight, taste, and smell, the so-called five senses—as well as our sense of balance. Among these, my research centers on vision.

Currently, within the field of vision, I am focusing specifically on spatial perception and am conducting research broadly divided into three areas.

The first is the study of "gaze perception." This research investigates where people perceive another person's gaze to be directed when they are facing each other. For example, suppose I am talking to you (the interviewer) while looking at your nose. The receiver of the gaze would likely perceive that I am making eye contact. This kind of perceptual discrepancy between the sender and receiver of a gaze also occurs when the sender is looking somewhere other than at the receiver. I am exploring how to interpret this discrepancy by applying mathematical analysis to data collected from experiments.

The second is what is known as "visual space." People visually perceive how far away objects are in the external space. This may seem obvious, but it is actually a remarkable feat. When we perceive depth, information from the three-dimensional external world is first converted into a two-dimensional, photograph-like image on the retina. Then, the brain reconstructs this two-dimensional information from the retina back into three-dimensional information. This visually perceived expanse of space is called visual space, and I am trying to clarify its perceptual mechanisms and properties.

Another is a phenomenon called "vection." This occurs, for example, when you are on a train stopped at a station platform. Even though your train is not moving, when the train on the opposite track starts to move, you feel as if your own train is moving in the opposite direction. Since vection involves perceiving one's own movement within a space by visually observing the uniform movement of the external world, it can be seen as an important element of spatial perception. I am conducting joint research on the relationship between vection and body movement with Associate Professor Takeharu Seno of Kyushu University.

Research on "visual space" and "vection" has potential applications in the field of virtual reality. I believe it can contribute to the evaluation of how things are seen and the sense of depth in popular video devices like head-mounted displays and 4K or 8K televisions, as well as to the development of video technology.

The study of "gaze perception" is geared toward application in research on the social and communication skills of children with developmental disabilities. For this reason, we are conducting studies not only with university students but also with children with developmental disabilities. Some children with developmental disabilities struggle with social skills and communication, and it is not yet clear how they see and perceive things before attempting to communicate. I hope to build a foundation for elucidating this mechanism and contribute to therapeutic support for children with developmental disabilities.

The catalyst for my current research was the struggle I faced with the nature of "support" while being involved in therapeutic support for children with developmental disabilities, from my time as an undergraduate in the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies to the present. I began to question what kind of support the children and their parents were seeking, and even whether "support" was necessary or not in the first place. While thinking about this, it occurred to me that understanding how each child feels and sees the world could lead to a re-evaluation of how to interact with and support them.

With that in mind, I focused on "gaze," which plays a particularly important role in communication, and decided to start my current research with the goal of elucidating the foundation for understanding it. In the process, I met various professors, including Professor Yoko Hamada and Professor Sachiko Mori of the Psycho-Space Project, and have deepened my interdisciplinary research to get where I am today.

So, it wasn't that I had a clear intention to study spatial perception from the beginning; it feels more like I arrived here through a process of trial and error.

In fact, when I first started my research (as a first-year student in the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies), I wanted to conduct research on children and was observing the mother-child and father-child relationships of infants from 0 to 3 years old and their parents. From there, I became interested in therapeutic support for developmental disabilities. Although my initial research theme and my current one may seem completely different at first glance, I believe they are deeply connected. How do we understand children with developmental disabilities? Interpretations are made from various perspectives, such as medical sciences, psychology, and education. I am incorporating the perspective of spatial perception. I believe that by incorporating this perspective, new mathematical analyses and interpretations of gaze perception will emerge. This approach is rare, and it might contain various phenomena and characteristics that have not been captured before. I feel that by combining the perspective of spatial perception and the mathematical psychology perspective with research on children with developmental disabilities, a new world that has never been seen before will come into view.

The deciding factor for me to enter graduate school at SFC was receiving an invitation from my current academic advisor, Professor Toshio Watanabe.

Professor Watanabe is a leading figure in mathematical psychology in Japan and has been at the forefront of this field for a long time. Mathematical psychology is a discipline that uses mathematical analysis methods to analyze various human psychological phenomena and better elucidate them. The reality is that universities and Research Centers and Institutes with professors specializing in this field are extremely limited worldwide. To pursue research in this field within Japan, I felt that my only choice was to enroll in the Graduate School of Media and Governance, where Professor Watanabe is.

I myself hope to firmly inherit and further develop mathematical psychology, particularly in the field of spatial perception.

Professor Watanabe himself is someone who dedicates himself to research with great stoicism. He gave me some passionate guidance, telling me, "First, study. Second, study. Third, study. Fourth, study" (laughs).

When I joined the Toshio Watanabe Laboratory, the first thing I was told was, "Study and research for at least eight hours a day." The teaching was, "You can do other things, but make sure you spend eight hours learning and absorbing on your own before you proceed with your research." This lesson has left a strong impression on me.

My research requires psychological experiments to obtain the data that forms the basis for analysis, so it starts with finding participants for these experiments. A single experiment requires at least 20 people, and when various conditions are factored in, writing a single paper can ultimately involve the cooperation of 80 to 100 people. While experiments involving children with developmental disabilities are conducted jointly with external welfare facilities, for many experiments with general adult participants, I often walk around this campus looking for collaborators.

The data collected from the experiments is analyzed by inputting a program I wrote myself into analysis software. Once a solid phenomenon becomes apparent, the next step is to delve deeper into the subjects and mechanisms of the experiment.

There is a spot on the veranda of a building here at SFC with a very far-reaching view. I had people stand there and conducted an experiment on how far they felt the distance was to a designated building. This is a study of visual space. For example, we investigate how far they perceive a building 300 meters away to be, or one 5 kilometers away. We also looked at what angle they felt it was at horizontally.

This experiment cannot be done without a wide, open space around eye level, so it would be difficult to conduct on a campus in Tokyo surrounded by large buildings. You could say it's an experiment unique to this campus.

SFC is in a very quiet location, so I think it's an extremely comfortable and ideal environment for concentrating on tasks like working with data on a computer, writing programs, or creating presentation materials.

Also, having been a sprinter on the track and field team during my undergraduate years, I'm the type of person who can't go without exercise. When I get stuck in my research, I use the training gym in the SFC arena (gymnasium) to refresh my mind before returning to my research activities.

Another thing I find very helpful is that there are many people on campus who are interested in my experiments. When I need to gather participants for my research, I can just walk over to the cafeteria or the co-op store and ask people, and they'll immediately say, "Sure," or listen to the experiment details and say, "That sounds interesting." The atmosphere of being immediately interested in what others are researching and willing to participate in experiments is wonderful.

I make an effort to actively communicate with other graduate students. I mostly do my research alone, but if I go to the loft in the Tau (τ) Building: Graduate School of Media and Governance Building, I can find graduate students from various fields working on their respective research. Seeing everyone working hard and having casual conversations there boosts my own motivation.

My immediate major goal is to obtain my doctorate within this academic year. I want to become a researcher who can produce papers and research results that contribute to the field of mathematical psychology. First, I plan to focus firmly on basic research, and as the next step, I want to think about how to connect it to applied research and technological development that are actually useful in daily life.

This focus on basic research is based on a philosophy of my own.

If you think of it like a pyramid, basic research is the foundation at the very bottom, and applied research is the part where you place things on top of that foundation to build the mountain higher and higher. Without the foundational basic research, you cannot build up the subsequent applied research.

That's why I place great importance on broadening the base of that foundation for applied research and making it solid. Furthermore, if I could be more ambitious, I would like to be able to show what kind of applied research can be placed on that new foundation. To that end, I want to make "building the foundation while sprouting the seeds of applied research" my research style.

To me, the Graduate School of Media and Governance is an environment where I can devote myself completely to research.

I am able to conduct fulfilling research by leveraging my own background and absorbing as many different methods as possible. Also, the various professors and peers treat me warmly, and sometimes strictly. We can have heated discussions until we reach a consensus. That's why I can be so passionate about my research. The Graduate School of Media and Governance is that kind of space.

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Toshio Watanabe Laboratory (Psycho-Space Project)

Keywords: Mathematical analysis of psychological phenomena, Perception and cognition of space, Life design

Research details: Based on the mathematical analysis of psychological phenomena, this laboratory conducts psychological experiments to explore perception and cognition, and creates psychometric scales to explore the human inner world.

Professor Toshio Watanabe, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies

Masaki Mori

JSPS Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows

Gaze Perception × Spatial Perception
2016 Aiso Award, Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University

Mori, M., & Watanabe, T. (in press). Anisotropy in Gaze Perceptional Space. *The Japanese Journal of Psychonomic Science*, 1–12.

Mori, M. (2016). *Geometrical Properties of Gaze Perceptual Space*. Master's Thesis, Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University.

Masaki Mori & Toshio Watanabe. "Different Property by the Axis Direction Crossing Diagonally Each Other in Gaze Perceptional Space," The 41st European Conference on Visual Perception, POSTER SESSION 4 No.174A, Trieste, Italy, 26th–30th August 2018

Gaze Perception × Developmental Disabilities
2017 Excellent Presentation Award, The 27th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Association of Medical and Psychological Study for Infants and Young Children

Mori, M., Takahashi, M., & Hamada, Y. "An Exploratory Study on Gaze Perception in Children with Developmental Disabilities," The 27th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Association of Medical and Psychological Study for Infants and Young Children, General Presentation 2-⑤, Taisho University, Tokyo, December 9, 2017

Visual Space and Depth Perception
Mori, M. (2014). *Depth Perception Characteristics of Trapezoids with Gradients and Textures*. Graduation Thesis, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University.

Masaki Mori & Toshio Watanabe. "Anisotropy in Visual Space with Near and Far Landmarks," The 40th European Conference on Visual Perception, 29th_POSTERS_17:00-18:00_99, Berlin, Germany, 27th–31st August 2017

Vection × Body Movement
Mori, M. & Seno, T. (in press). Inhibition of vection by grasping an object. Experimental Brain Research, 1-7. doi:10.1007/s00221-018-5375-3

Mori, M., & Seno, T. (2017). The Effect of Different Body Postures on Vection. *Transactions of the Virtual Reality Society of Japan*, 22(3), 391–394. doi:10.18974/tvrsj.22.3_391

Masaki Mori & Takeharu Seno. "Inhibition of Vection by Object Grasping Movement," The 33rd Annual Meeting of the International Society for Psychophysics, I-28, Fukuoka, Japan, 22nd–26th October 2017