Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology

Prof. Dr. Michiko Sakaki

Michiko Sakaki is a Tenure Track Assistant Professor for Educational Neuroscience and Cognitive Psychology. In her research, she aims to understand how emotion affects cognitive processing, such as memory, attention and decision making.

Address

Universität Tübingen, Hector-Institut für Empirische Bildungsforschung, 
Europastraße 6, 72072 Tübingen
Raum 441

Contact

 07071 29-76122
michiko.sakakispam prevention@uni-tuebingen.de 

 

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Affect and Learning Science lab
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Publications

Current Publications

  • Egbuniwe, I., van Reekum, C., & Sakaki, M. (2025). Heart rate variability is associated with the level of poverty in adolescents in Nigeria. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 214, 113201. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2025.113201
  • Theobald, M., Lin, W. M., Sakaki, M., Murayama, K., & Brod, G.  (2025) How (much) do people revise their goals after success and failure? The Triple-A model of goal revision. Educational Psychologist, 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2025.2533232
  • Ishii, R., Murayama, K., Sakaki, M., Fukuzumi, N., Ishikawa, S.-i., Nakazato, N., Ohtani, K., Suzuki, T., Tamura, A., & Tanaka, A. (2025). Registered Report Stage I: Developmental trajectories of students’ interest in learning through the transition from primary to secondary school. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 82, 102398. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2025.102398 (in press)
  • Sakaki, M., Murayama, K., Frenzel, A. C., Goetz, T., Marsh, H., & Lichtenfeld, S., Wünsche, M., & Pekrun, R. (in press). Parents’ academic expectations and aspirations predict students’ achievement emotions. Journal of Educational Psychology. (In Press)    https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000959
  • Whatley, M., Murayama, K., Sakaki, M., & Castel, A. (2025). Curiosity across the adult lifespan: Age-related differences in state and trait curiosity. PLOS One, 20(5): e0320600. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0320600
  • Eberhart, J., Murayama, K., Sakaki, M., & Bryce, D. (2025). Metacognitive monitoring in early elementary school-aged children: Task dependency in monitoring judgements, task consistency in monitoring behaviours. Cognitive Development, 74, 101561 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2025.101561  
  • Izaki, T., Himichi, T., & Sakaki, M. (2024). Cardiac cycle modulates social pain. Biological Psychology https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2024.108853
  • Gao, C., Ren, J., Sakaki, M., & Jia, X. (2024). Memory enhancement for emotional words is attributed to both valence and arousal. Acta Psychologica, 246, 104249. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2024.104249
  • Sakaki, M., Ten, A., Stone, H., & Murayama, K. (2024). Role of metacognitive confidence judgments in curiosity: Different effects of confidence on curiosity across epistemic and perceptual domains. Cognitive Science, 48(6), e13474. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13474
  • Fastrich, G. M., FitzGibbon, L., Lau, J. K., Aslan, S., Sakaki, M., & Murayama. K. (2024). Adult age differences in non-instrumental information seeking strategies. Psychology & Aging, 39(3), 313–323. https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000806
  • Sakaki, M., Murayama, K., Izuma, K., Aoki, R., Yomogita, Y., Sugiura, A., Singhi, N., Matsumoto, M., & Matsumoto, K. (2024). Motivated with joy or anxiety: Does approach-avoidance goal framing elicit differential reward-network activation in the brain? Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-024-01154-3
  • Kim, S., Sakaki, M. & Murayama, K. (2023). Metacognition of curiosity: People underestimate the seductive lure of non-instrumental information. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-023-02404-0
  • Sakaki, M., Murayama, K., Frenzel, A. C., Goetz, T., Marsh, H. W., Lichtenfeld, S., & Pekrun, R. (2023). Developmental trajectories of achievement emotions in mathematics during adolescence. Child Development, 95(1), 276–295. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13996
  • Lieder, E. R., Nakazato, N., Ohtani, K., Ishii, R., Fukuzumi, N., Sakaki, M., Ishikawa, S., Suzuki, T., Murayama, K., & Tanaka, A. (2023). Children’s study habits are predicted by their parents’ learning strategy preferences. Learning and Instruction, 88, 101809. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2023.101809
  • Tupitsa, E., Egbuniwe, I., Lloyd, W. K., Puertollano, M., Macdonald, B., Joanknecht, K., Sakaki, M., & van Reekum, C. M. (2023). Heart rate variability covaries with amygdala functional connectivity during voluntary emotion regulation. NeuroImage, 274, 120136. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.120136
  • Raw, J., Rorke, A., Ellis, J., Murayama, K. & Sakaki, M. (2023). Memory of the UK's 2016 EU referendum: The effects of valence on the long-term measures of a public event. Emotion, 23(1), 52-74. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000788
  • Yagi A., FitzGibbon L., Murayama, K., Shinomori K., & Sakaki M. (2023). Uncertainty drives exploration of negative information across younger and older adults. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, 23, 809-826. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-023-01082-8
  • Kurdi, V., Fukuzumi, N., Ishii, R., Tamura, A., Nakazato, N., Ohtani, K., Ishikawa, S., Suzuki, T., Sakaki, M., Murayama, K. & Tanaka, A. (2023). Transmission of basic psychological need satisfaction between parents and adolescents: The critical role of parental perceptions. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 15, 157-169. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/19485506231153012
  • Tanaka, A., Tamura, A., Ishii, R., Ishikawa, S., Nakazato, N., Ohtani, K., Sakaki, M., Suzuki, T., & Murayama, K. (2023) Longitudinal association between maternal autonomy support and controlling parenting and adolescents’ depressive symptoms. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 52, 1058-1073. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-022-01722-1
  • Sakaki, M., Meliss, S., Murayama, K., Yomogida, Y., Matsumori, K., Sugiura, A., Matsumoto, M. & Matsumoto, K. (2022). Motivated for near impossibility: How task type and reward modulate task enjoyment and the striatal activation for extremely difficult task. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 23, 30–41. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-022-01046-4
  • Tamura, A., Ishii, R., Yagi, A., Fukuzumi, N., Hatano, A., Sakaki, M., Tanaka, A., & Murayama, K. (2022). Exploring the within-person contemporaneous network of motivational engagement. Learning and Instruction, 81, 101649. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2022.101649
  • Kandaleft, D., Murayama, K., Roesch, E., & Sakaki, M. (2022) Resting-state functional connectivity does not predict individual differences in the effects of emotion on memory. Scientific Report, 12, 14481. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-18543-8
  • Forrest, J., Vogt, J. , McDonald, C., Searle, C. & Sakaki, M. (2022) Blind to threat: the presence of temporary goals prevents attention to imminent threat already at early stages of attention allocation. Motivation Science, 8(3), 239–251. https://doi.org/10.1037/mot0000261
  • Vogt, J., Dodd, H. F., Parker, A., Duffield, F., & Sakaki, M. (2022). Now you see it, now you don’t: Relevance of threat enhances social anxiety-linked attentional bias to angry faces, but relevance of neutral information attenuates it. PLoS ONE, 17(7), e0271752. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0271752  
  • Ohtani, K., Tamura, A., Sakaki, M. , Murayama, K., Ishikawa, S.-i., Ishii, R., Nakazato, N., Suzuki, T. & Tanaka, A. (2022) Parental perception matters: reciprocal relations between adolescents’ depressive symptoms and parental perceptions. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 70(1), 103–118. https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000632
  • Tamura, A., Murayama, K., Ishii, R., Sakaki, M., & Tanaka, A. (2022). The effect of low-intensity exercise on emotional and cognitive engagement in the classroom. Npj Science Of Learning, 7(1), 9. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-022-00125-y    
  • Murayama, K., Usami, S. & Sakaki, M. (2022) Summary-statistics-based power analysis: A new and practical method to determine sample size for mixed-effects modeling. Psychological Methods. https://doi.org/10.1037/met0000330  

Full Publication List

Link to Full Publication List

Curriculum Vitae

since May 2021
Tenure Track Professor for Educational Neuroscience and Cognitive Psychology

Hector Research Institute of Educational Science and Psychology, University of Tübingen

2020-2021
Research Scientist

Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology, University of Tübingen

Since 2020
Visiting Senior Research Fellow

University of Reading

Since 2019
Visiting Associate Professor

Kochi Technology of University

2013-2020
Senior Research Fellow

University of Reading

2010-2013
Research Assistant Professor

University of Southern California

2009-2010
Postdoctoral Research Fellow

University of Southern California

2007-2009
Visiting Research Fellow

University of Southern California

2007-2009
Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Neuroscience Research Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan

2007
PhD in Education Psychology

University of Tokyo, Japan

2003
MA in Education Psychology

University of Tokyo, Japan

2001
BA in Education Psychology

University of Tokyo, Japan

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