Shuhei Iimura

Soka University

Environmental sensitivity is a meta-concept that describes individual differences in susceptibility to both positive and negative environmental influences and has been repeatedly reported to correlate with other established personality traits, including the Big Five. The purpose of this study was to examine the correlation between the general facto...

Environmental sensitivity is a meta-concept that describes individual differences in susceptibility to both positive and negative environmental influences and has been repeatedly reported to correlate with other established personality traits, including the Big Five. The purpose of this study was to examine the correlation between the general facto...

Background: Humans vary in their sensitivity to stressful and supportive environments and experiences. Such individual differences in environmental sensitivity are associated with mechanisms of stress-related psychiatric symptoms. In recent years, researchers have focused on bidirectional interactions in the brain-gut-microbiota axis as a neurophy...

Background Humans vary in their sensitivity to stressful and supportive environments and experiences. Such individual differences in environmental sensitivity are associated with mechanisms of stress-related psychiatric symptoms. In recent years, researchers have focused on bidirectional interactions in the brain-gut-microbiota axis as a neurophysi...

Background: Sensory processing sensitivity is a personality or temperamental trait defined as individual differences in the tendency to perceive and process both positive and negative stimuli and experiences. Studies have shown that high sensitivity is correlated with psychosocial health, including depression and anxiety. However, its relationship...

Environmental Sensitivity, which explains individual differences in the tendency to respond more to both positive and negative environmental influences, can be measured by the self-reported Highly Sensitive Person scale. This paper introduced psychometric properties of a brief Japanese version of a 10-item measure of sensitivity (HSP-J10) developed...

Based on the Differential Susceptibility Theory, we examined whether the relationship between pubertal maturation and depressive symptoms can be moderated by individual differences in environmental sensitivity. The current article used the three‐wave data collected from Japanese adolescents aged from 12 to 15 years (girls = 111, boys = 98). Consequ...

Sensory processing sensitivity is a personality or temperamental trait defined as individual differences in the tendency to perceive and process both positive and negative stimuli and experiences. Studies have shown that high sensitivity is correlated with psychosocial health, including depression and anxiety. However, its relationship with physica...

Based on the Differential Susceptibility Theory, we examined whether the relationship between pubertal maturation and depressive symptoms can be moderated by individual differences in environmental sensitivity. The current article used the three-wave data collected from Japanese adolescents aged from 12 to 15 years (n = 209). Consequently, a signif...

Psychologists worldwide are becoming increasingly concerned about the negative impact of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on adolescents’ mental health. However, compared to studies involving adults, research using a young population is limited. To further understand the mental health of older adolescents and young adults during the pandem...

The Emotions as a Child Scale (EAC) assesses five parental emotion socialization strategies for three emotions (anger, fear/anxiety, and sadness): reward, override, neglect, magnify, and punish. However, there is limited research on the factorial and cross-cultural validity and test-retest reliability of the EAC. In the current study, the validity...

Recent research into Person × Environment interaction has supported the view that sensitivity to environmental influences is a susceptibility factor rather than a vulnerability factor. Given this perspective, this study examined the role of the adolescent's sensory-processing sensitivity in the context of weekly life events and weekly socioemotiona...

Environmental Sensitivity, which explains individual differences in sensitivity to positive and negative environmental influences, can be measured by the self-reported Highly Sensitive Person scale. This paper introduced the reliability and validity of a brief Japanese version of a 10-item measure of sensitivity (HSP-J10) developed by four studies...

Recent research into Person x Environment interaction has supported the view that sensitivity to environmental influences is a susceptibility factor rather than a vulnerability factor. Given this perspective, this study examined the role of the adolescent’s sensory-processing sensitivity in the context of weekly life events and weekly socioemotiona...

Some researchers indicate that the transition to high school deflects adolescent developmental trajectories. Others assert that it provides a new possibility for the promotion of adolescents' socioemotional well-being. One critical view missing in such claims is that individual variabilities interact with environmental influences. We employed the f...

Some researchers indicate that the transition to high school deflects adolescent developmental trajectories. Others assert it provides a new possibility for the promotion of adolescents’ socioemotional well-being. One critical view missing in such claims is that individual variabilities interact with environmental influences. We employed the framew...

Although the transition from junior high or middle school to high school can be a stressful turning point for youth socio‐emotional development, the role of individual differences in susceptibility to the transition in adolescents’ socio‐emotional well‐being remains unclear. The current study examined the developmental relation between how central...

The transition from junior high or middle school to high school can be a stressful turning point for youth development. The role of individual differences in susceptibility to the transition in well-being remains unclear. The current study examined the developmental relation between how central the high school transition is to a student’s identity...

High school entrance examinations and preparation for them have become a highly stressful experience for many Japanese adolescents. This study examined the relationship between stress-related growth (SRG) and distress resulting from these exams from the perspective of positive meaning-making. Ninth graders (N = 183, 87 females, aged 14–15 years) of...

The transition to high school is generally considered as a stressful turning point in adolescent development, but some students experience personal growth (i.e., positive developmental changes) through that experience. It is important to examine the mechanism behind such positive changes to understand various developmental patterns of adolescents d...

The current study investigated the effects of a brief psycho-educational presentation about posttraumatic growth (PTG: positive changes that may occur as a result of psychological struggle with a highly stressful life event) on the self-reported PTG by using the PTG Inventory (PTGI). Few empirical studies have investigated the possible ceiling or f...

Prior work has indicated that female adolescents mature more quickly than males with regard to the various personality dimensions. From the developmental perspectives, this study aimed to explore gender differences in the relationships between resilience and the Big Five personality traits in Japanese adolescents. Middle school students (N = 310, 1...

Stress-related research in psychology has traditionally focused on both understanding and reducing stress responses. This paradigm has changed in recent years to more detailed studies on recovery from extreme stress responses and on growth. Therefore, in addition to paradigms of the past, it has become necessary to develop a process model that incl...

Junior high school students in Japan who want to go to high school are required to take entrance examinations: these can be a highly stressful experience for adolescents. However, it is possible that this experience may also contribute to positive psychological change, which is known as stress-related growth. The present study examined effects of p...

This study developed a Junior High School Students' Version of the Sensory Sensitivity Index (SSSI) to assess the characteristics of sensitive students. Participants included 250 students (119 boys, 112 girls, and 19 not categorized by gender). The results demonstrated that the 12-item SSSI consisted of two factors “Ease of Excitation” and “Environ...

The present study aims to develop and examine the reliability, internal validity, and criterion validity of the Life Skills Scale for Adolescents and Adults (LSSAA) that would enable measurement of the level of life skills in Japanese adolescents and adults. In study 1, 238 university students completed a 41-item questionnaire for the LSSAA based o...

Background: This study examines a stress-related growth model in Japanese 3rd year junior high school students facing an entrance examination, based on the conceptual model of Schaefer and Moos (1992). Methods: The participants were 191 students (96 male, 87 female, and 8 unspecified), who answered a socio-demographic questionnaire comprising the...