2016 Volume 55 Pages 1-17
This paper reviews the studies on children in infancy, early and middle childhood in Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology, Japanese Journal of Developmental Psychology, Japanese Journal of Psychology, and Japanese Psychological Research published between July 2014 and June 2015. In the 57th annual meeting of the Japanese Association of Educational Psychology, the number of researches on children’s social development was relatively high. Children’s social development is also an important area for study due to social problems surrounding the children. Therefore, this paper focuses on the studies of children’s social relationships. These studies are classified into the following three categories and reviewed: social development, self development and cognitive development. The author also points out the importance of the social-historical perspective in the developmental studies and the necessity of reconsidering a developmental theory by facing the social reality such as poverty of children.
