Contact
Research interests
My main research interest is how infants/adults engage in social interactions. Especially, I'm interested in how humans perceive social partner’s gaze information (e.g., direct gaze, gaze cueing) and respond to it (e.g., gaze following). Currently, I focus on action value calculations in social situations for the decision-making of social behaviours. To examine social and reward processing, I use behavioural (eye-tracking) and neurophysiological (EEG, heart rate, pupil) measurements.
Degree
April 2018 – March 2021 Kyoto University, PhD. Major: Experimental Psychology
April 2016 – March 2018 Kyoto University, M.A. Major: Experimental Psychology
April 2012 – March 2016 Nagoya University, B.A. Major: Cognitive Neuroscience
Academic Positions
October 2021 - present Associate Research Fellow, Birkbeck, University of London
Host Researcher: Professor Tim Smith
April 2021 - present JSPS Post-doctoral Fellow (PD), Doshisha University
Host Researcher: Professor Shoji Itakura
April 2018 - March 2021 JSPS Young Fellow (DC1), Kyoto University
Host Researcher: Professor Shoji Itakura
October 2019 - March 2020 Visiting PhD student, Central European University
Host Researcher: Professor. Gergerly Csibra
April 2019 - August 2019 Teaching Assistant (Developmental Science), Kyoto University
September 2018 - March 2019 Visiting PhD student, Birkbeck, University of London
Host Researcher: Dr. Atsushi Senju
April 2017 - August 2017 Teaching Assistant (Cognitive Neuroscience), Kyoto University
April 2016 - March 2018 Office Assistant, Kyoto University
Committee Involvement
August 2019 - September 2021 Association for Psychological Science Student Caucus Campus Representative
Grants
2019 Overseas research grant for Graduate students (Kyoto University)
2018 Overseas Challenge Program for Young Researchers (JSPS)
Awards and Honors
2021 JSPS Ikushi Prize (endowment from His Majesty the Emperor Emeritus Akihito)
2020 Kyoto University President’s Award
2019 Society for Improvement of Psychological Science Mission Award for improving
psychological science in the face of challenge, as a contributor to the ManyBabies1 Collaboration
2019 The Kyoto University Foundation Travel Award
2016- 2017 Kyoto University Department of Psychology Scholarship for Graduate Student
Publications
Peer-reviewed journal articles
2022
Manzi, F., Ishikawa, M., Di Dio, C., Itakura, S., Kanda, T., Ishiguro, H., & Marchetti, A. (2022). Infants’ Prediction of Humanoid Robot’s Goal-Directed Action. International Journal of Social Robotics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-022-00941-7
Ishikawa, M., & Itakura, S. (2022). Social reward anticipation in infants as revealed by event-related potentials. Social Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470919.2022.2138535
Ishikawa, M., Senju, A., Kato, M., & Itakura, S. (2022). Physiological arousal explains infant
gaze following under various context. R. Soc. Open Sci. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.220592
Ishikawa, M., & Itakura, S. (2022) Pupil dilation predicts modulation of direct gaze on action value calculations. Biological Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2022.108340
2020
Hamamoto, H., Mizobata, R., Ishikawa, M., & Itakura, S. (2020). Examining the social influence of reputation for partner productivity level on the collaborative task performance of young children. Infant and Child Development, e2213. https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.2213
Haensel, X. J., Ishikawa, M., Itakura, S., Smith, T. J., & Senju, A. (2020). Cultural influences on face scanning are consistent across infancy and adulthood. Infant Behavior and Development. 61, 101503.
Ishikawa, M., Haensel, X. J., Smith, T. J., Senju, A., & Itakura, S. (2020). Affective priming enhances gaze cueing effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000880
Manzi, F., Ishikawa, M., Di Dio, C., Itakura, S., Kanda, T., Ishiguro, H., & Marchetti, A. (2020). The understanding of congruent and incongruent referential gaze in 17-month-old infants: an eye-tracking study comparing human and robot. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 1-10.
Ishikawa, M., Senju, A., & Itakura, S. (2020). Learning Process of Gaze Following: Computational Modeling Based on Reinforcement Learning. Frontiers in Psychology, 11.
ManyBabies Consortium. (2020). Quantifying sources of variability in infancy research using the infant-directed-speech preference. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 3(1), 24-52.
Haensel, J., Danvers, M., Ishikawa, M., Itakura, S., Tucciarelli, R., Smith, T. J., & Senju, A.
(2020). Culture modulates face scanning during dyadic social interactions. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 1-11.
2019
Ishikawa, M., & Itakura, S. (2019). Physiological arousal predicts gaze following in infants. Proc. R. Soc. B 20182746. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.2746
Ishikawa, M., Yoshimura, M., Sato, H., & Itakura, S. (2019). Effects of attentional behaviours
on infant visual preferences and object choice. Cognitive Processing. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-019-00918-x
2018
Ishikawa, M., Itakura, S., & Tanabe, C, H. (2018). Effects of autistic traits and context use on
social cognitions a mediation analysis. Neurophysiology Research, 1(1).
Ishikawa, M., & Itakura, S. (2018). Observing others’ gaze direction affects infants’ preference for looking at gazing- or gazed-at faces. Frontiers in Psychology, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01503
2017
Ishikawa, M., Park, Y. H., Kitazaki, M., & Itakura, S., (2017) Social information affects adults’
evaluation of fairness in distributions: An ERP approach. PloS one, 12(2), e0172974.
Ishikawa, M., & Itakura, S. (2017) Familiarity of Actors Affects Eye Gaze Processing During
Observation of Goal-Directed Actions. Psychol Behav Sci Int J.; 2(4) : 555592. https://doi.org/10.19080/PBSIJ.2017.02.555592.
Ishikawa, M., Itakura, S., & Tanabe, C. H. (2017) Autistic Traits Affect P300 Response to Unexpected Events, regardless of Mental State Inferences, Autism Research and Treatment, vol. 2017, Article ID 8195129, 10 pages. https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/8195129.
Conference Presentations
2022
Ishikawa, M., & Itakura, S., Social reward anticipations in 7-month-old infants: An ERP study. ICIS, Ottawa, Canada, July 7-10, 2022
2021
Ishikawa, M., & Itakura, S., Eye Contact Induces Over-evaluation of Expected Reward Value in Reinforcement Learning, Psychonomic Society Virtual Annual Meeting 2021, Poster session 1066, November, 4-6, 2021
Ishikawa, M., & Itakura, S., PUPIL DILATION TO DIRECT GAZE PREDICTS OVER-ESTIMATION OF EXPECTED BEHAVIOURAL VALUE DURING EYE CONTACT, Society for Psychophysiology Research Virtual Annual Meeting 2021, Poster session 1-9, October, 10-18, 2021
Manzi, F., Ishikawa, M., Itakura, S., Kanda, T., Ishiguro, H., Di Dio, C., Massaro D., & Marchetti. Adults' use of the referential nature of gaze to infer preference in human and robot. Poster presented at Human-like Behavior and Cognition in Robots Workshop at IROS2021, Prague, September 27 - October 2, 2021.
Manzi, F., Ishikawa, M., Itakura, S., Kanda, T., Ishiguro, H., Di Dio, C., Massaro, D., & Marchetti, A., Can humanoid robots be intentional agents like humans?: An eye-tracking study on infants’ understanding of goal-directed action, Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development, A-0098, Budapest, Hungary, January 4-8, 2021
2020
Ishikawa, M., Senju, A., Kato, M., & Itakura, S., Heart rate mediates contextual modulation of infant gaze following, ICIS online, Glasgow, UK, July 6-9, 2020
Ishikawa, M., Senju, A., Kato, M., & Itakura, S., Heart rate partially explains contextual modulation of infant gaze following, Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development, PB-07, Budapest, Hungary, January 8-10, 2020
Manzi, F., Ishikawa, M., Itakura, S., Kanda, T., Ishiguro, H., Di Dio, C., Massaro, D., & Marchetti, A., Can humanoid robots be informative partners like humans?: An eye-tracking study on infants’ gaze understanding, Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development, PB-6, Budapest, Hungary, January 8-10, 2020
2019
Manzi, F., Ishikawa, M., Itakura, S., Kanda, T., Ishiguro, S., Massaro D., & Marchetti, A., Agency is not a problem: A study on the action understanding in infants comparing human and robot., 19th European Conference on Developmental Psychology, #24, Athens, Greece, August 29- September 1, 2019
Ishikawa, M., & Itakura, S., The method to predict infant behaviour: A study of Artificial Neural Networks, 4th Lancaster Conference on Infant and Early Child Development, Lancaster, UK, August 21-23, 2019
Haensel, X. J., Ishikawa, M., Itakura, S., Neesgaard, N., Tucciarelli, R., Smith, J, T., Senju, A., A cross-cultural comparison of face scanning strategies in infancy: screen-based paradigms and live dyadic interactions, VSS, 53.305, Florida, USA, May 19, 2019
Ishikawa, M., & Itakura, S., How machine learning can be used in social cognitive science? A challenge to predict infant social behaviour, Understanding Others-Integration of Social Cognitive and Affective Processes, #5, Munich, Germany, March 28, 2019
Ishikawa, M., & Itakura, S., Physiological Arousal changes dynamically before infants show gaze following, Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development, PB-07,
Budapest, Hungary, January 3, 2019
Manzi, F., Ishikawa, M., Itakura, S., Kanda, T., Ishiguro, S., Massaro D., & Marchetti, A., Agency is not a problem: A study on the action understanding in infants comparing human and robot., 19th European Conference on Developmental Psychology, #24, Athens, Greece, August 29- September 1, 2019
Manzi, F., Ishikawa, M., Itakura, S., Kanda, T., Ishiguro, S., & Di Dio, C. The role of the gaze as a social signal in early childhood: a comparative Eye-Tracker study between humans and robots in 16-month-old Japanese children., Annual Conference of the Italian Society of Psychology, Italy, 2019
2018
Ishikawa, M., & Itakura, S., The effects of eye contact on infant heart rate: A study in the context of gaze following, British Psychological Society Developmental Section, Liverpool, UK, September 12-September14, 2018
Ishikawa, M., & Itakura, S., Preference for Gaze-Shifters in infants: in the triadic relation between Self-Other-Environment, ISSBD, Gold Coast, Australia, July 15-July19, 2018
Haensel, X. J., Ishikawa, M., Itakura, S., Smith, J. T., Senju, A., Cultural differences in the development of face scanning, ICIS, Philadelphia, USA, June 30-July 3, 2018
Haensel. X. J., Danvers, M., Ishikawa, M., Itakura, S., Smith, J. T., Senju, A., Examining cultural differences in naturalistic face scanning: A data-driven approach to analysing head-mounted eye-tracking data, VSS, Florida, USA, May 18-23, 2018
2017
Ishikawa, M., & Itakura, S., Observing gaze interaction affects facial preferences in infants, 18th European Conference on Developmental Psychology, Utrecht, Netherlands, August 29-September 1, 2017
Ishikawa, M., & Itakura, S., Actors’ familiarity affects eye gaze processing during observing goal-directed actions, International Convention of Psychological Science, III-013, Vienna, Austria, March 24, 2017
Ishikawa, M., Yoshimura, M., Sato, H., & Itakura, S., Gaze cuing affects the object choices in infants: I choose what you look at, Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development, PB-008, Budapest, Hungary, January 6, 2017
2016
Ishikawa, M., Itakura, S., & Tanabe, C, H., Effects of autistic traits and the context use on social cognitions: A mediation analysis, 31st International Congress of Psychology, RC-11-220, Yokohama, Japan, July 24-29, 2016
External TALK/Lecture
27/June/2021 Doshisha University Center for Baby Science, Guest speaker for Baby Science cafe, Japan, “Importance of other’s gaze information in infants”
26/September/2020 Doshisha University Center for Baby Science, Guest speaker for Baby Science colloquium, Japan, “Development of gaze perception: A Series of Physiological Studies”
1/Feburuay/2019 Catholic Milan University. Short Lecture for PhD students. Italy. “Why we follow other’s gaze direction? The Mechanism of Gaze Following”
12/February/2019 Birkbeck, University of London, CBCD Seminar, UK. “Physiological arousal predicts gaze following in infants”
21/February/2019 Neuchatel University. Guest speaker for the lecture of Psychology. Switzerland. “My heart is beating fast: The effects of eye contact on infant physiological states and social behaviour”
21/November/2018 Lancaster University, Psychology seminar. UK. “The Neurophysiological Mechanism of Eye Contact Effects on Gaze Following”