This study examines the psychological impact of conducting social interactive games for elementary school children with high withdrawal and aggressive behaviors. The participants for intervention were selected from a class of third graders. We selected two children with withdrawal, two children with aggression, and two children with both withdrawal and aggression from the aforementioned class. In this class, social interactive games were conducted six times in two months. The results indicated that by conducting social interactive games, the children procured more opportunities to engage with their classmates, and they enjoyed playing these games. Thus, it was considered that such games led to a decrease in withdrawal and aggressive behaviors by target children. However, only a limited effect was observed when it came to reduction in withdrawal and aggressive behaviors. Additionally, the hypothesis model employed in this study is formulated on the basis of only one example; therefore, further investigation is required in the future.

Despite the widespread practice of providing psychological support to Japanese schools in times of crisis, there is little consensus regarding its basic concepts and methods. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to clarify schools’ crisis-intervention system and programs at each prefectural district. We surveyed 37 school counseling coordinators at 32 locations of the prefectural Society of Certified Clinical Psychologists (SCCP). The results revealed that 59.4% of SCCP had an implementation manual for school crisis interventions. The most common characteristic about the request route is the request from the Board of Education to the SCCP, and the most common support system is the additional placement of external clinical psychologists and the deployment of support teams. As for support programs, it was found that a wide range of programs were provided, from overall support to individual counseling. There was no significant difference in the number of support programs depending on the support system, but there was an effect size, and team support tended to implement many programs. In order to provide appropriate support, it was suggested that there should be sufficient cooperation with educational administration on a daily basis.

The purpose of this study was to develop “ARJAD; Assessment of Reading comprehension in JApanese as a second language for Deaf children”. For this purpose, ARJAD was developed using DLA’‍s concept. ARJAD is an assessment that takes procedures according to the suitability of deaf children using the language of Visual-Gestural mode. We examined the validity of ARJAD by trying it on deaf children in an elementary school for the Deaf that practice Japanese Sign Language and Written Japanese bilingual education. As a result, it was found that the ARJAD assessment tool <Reading> can clarify the actual situation and issues of reading the answer and text in Japanese by performing retailing using JSL and “summary check”. It was also suggested that the rewritten reading books that considered the number of vocabulary and sentence patterns are effective for Deaf children to learn to read and enjoy Japanese text.

Within children’s culture, Japanese children’s songs are remarkable for their richness and diversity. As Japan rapidly modernized, western music fused with traditional Japanese music leading to the birth of singing songs and nursery rhymes. Children’s songs have been mass-produced with the rapid spread of various media, starting with records, radio, television, and more recently computer games and the internet. This rich variety of children’s songs can be thought of as unique to Japan, but it is not just a matter of repeating mass production and consumption. Especially in childcare, songs are very important to children’s development.

This paper focuses on hymns which are said to have influenced the creation of singing songs, revisits what children’s songs are, and what the songs are for children, from the perspective of children’s hymns.

In this four-year longitudinal study, the authors explored how children develop their self-control and interpersonal collaborative skills. The total of 318 children in five regions across the country participated in this study when they had been 4 years old to 2nd grade. The average of the whole group observational rates of the collaborative and self-control competencies increased along with the ages. However, to illustrate the four-year transformation by dividing the data into high and low groups with median quartiles, the collaborative and self-control competencies were distributed in 16 types, which depicted children developed the competencies with their own pattern individually. This study suggested the social and emotional competencies do not follow a constant developmental curve, therefore, high quality care and education is necessarily in order to foster the children’s collaborative competencies.

Early childhood education is important for creating a sustainable society. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has pointed out that “childcare quality reform” is a common issue in Japan and Korea. In South Korea, an integrated nursery curriculum was introduced in March 2012 for 5-year-olds in kindergartens and childcare facilities (orinizippu). In 2013, the curriculum was expanded to include children aged 3 to 5 using the “Nuri Curriculum” for ages 3 to 5. In March 2017, a revised integrated curriculum was introduced in Japan. This article will address the issue of how to evaluate the quality of childcare education by analyzing the revised daycare curriculum in Japan and South Korea. For our research, we will compare the following two areas of the integrated curriculum for children under the age of three in Japan and Korea: “Nature exploration and Environment”, and “Art experience and Expression”. The purpose of this paper is to examine the way childcare curriculum for children under the age of three is implemented to ensure the quality of childcare practices through a comparison between Japan’s Nursery Center Childcare Guidelines and the Korean Standard Nursery Course.

I considered the way of the expertise of the early childhood educator by analyzing the early childhood from the point of character formation. In early childhood, human beings begin self-formation. Childcare must be done in accordance with the process of it.

Childcare by a mother should naturally be done in accordance with her child’s growth and development. Therefore, a mother is the main worker in her childcare. Early childhood educators help the mother’s childcare. Childcare consists of nurturing, protection and education. Conventionally nurturing and protection have been more emphasized than education in childcare. But now early childhood educators must become leaders in early childhood education with expertise enough to lead a mother’s childcare.

Now childcare in early childhood is considered more important than before. Education as one element in childcare is different from the other two elements (nurturing and protection). Education cultivates tolerance in children by giving the children some stress. Therefore, the role of early childhood educators becomes wider and the level-up of expertise of early childhood educators is more required than before.

This study focuses on walking during early childhood to find out the actual status of living environment surrounding infants, such as domestic setting, means of transportation outside the home, physical activities and guardians’ awareness concerning walking, etc. The study had 120 participants, who are guardians of one-year-old (n=34), two-year-old (n=53), and three-year-old (n=33) infants in the steady walking stage enrolled in nursery classes for zero-year-old, one-year-old, and two-year-old children. Through the research, awareness of the importance of an environment and outside transportation means that encourage walking were identified to be insufficient, while most of the guardians understood the importance of physical activities in early childhood. Infants went out after nursery hours mostly because they accompanied parents who needed to go shopping or do other things. Accordingly, the infants’ modes of transportation were determined by the parents’ convenience. A comparison of time spent on shopping carts and strollers found strollers being used for longer hours in total, while shopping carts occupied more than 80% of the time spent on shopping.

In employee of a private university, I examined whether high stress reaction group has a characteristic lifestyle factor or body composition, and whether this feature, if any, is also observed in those with heart and vascular age higher than the real age. I used stress check data assessing job stress. Those with stress reaction points 17 or lower were regarded as belonging high stress reaction group. As for the heart and vascular age, I calculated this parameter by using D’Agostino’s method based on Framingham study data. Multiple logistic regression analysis revealed that, in both men and women, the high stress reaction group was characterized by awareness of insufficient sleep rest. Whereas, those with heart and vascular age higher than the real age were characterized by high rate of obesity. These results indicated that lifestyle factor or body composition differed between the high stress reaction group and the group with high heart and vascular age, suggesting that job stress increase the cardiovascular risk via mechanisms other than the accumulation of classical risk factors.

[Purpose] This study examined the visual and cognitive factors affecting Multiple Object Tracking (MOT) skills using visual search strategies. Cognitive functions of selective attention and information processing speed were studied. [Subjects] Participants were 25 male college students with 19.44 years as average age. [Methods] The Neuro Tracker MOT task was used to measure the participants’ MOT skills. We used glasses measuring Ocular Motor Skills to simultaneously measure visual search activity during the task. Ocular Motor Skills data included the gaze travel distance, the number of stops, the stop time, and the stationary point’s travel speed. For visual function measurement, we adopted eight standard Japanese items (Static Visual Acuity, Kinetic Visual Acuity, Dynamic Visual Acuity, Contrast Sensitivity, Ocular Motor Skills, Depth Perception, Visual Reaction Time, and Eye/Hand Coordination). For cognitive function measurement, we used the Stroop/Reverse-Stroop Test-II. [Results] MOT skills were designated as the dependent variable, Ocular Motor Skill data (4 items), visual function (8 items), and cognitive function (2 items) were designated as the independent variables. Multiple regression analyses were performed for all the independent variables. No significant differences were found for any item with Ocular Motor Skill data and cognitive function as independent variables. However, among visual functions, a significant difference was observed in the Visual Reaction Time. [Conclusion] The results suggest that improving the visual functions to acquire information instantaneously (0.1 sec) may improve MOT skills. This study is useful for research on the expansion of conventional training methods and determinants of MOT skills.

The purpose of this study was to examine the actual condition of students’ learning in physical education (PE) classes and the effectiveness of the PE curriculum revision in the Republic of Korea (ROK) according to the results of a 2013 survey. Firstly, we considered the backgrounds and the major points of ROK’s national PE curriculum revised in 2007, 2009, and 2015. Secondly, we examined the effectiveness of the revisions using the results of a 2013 survey. The survey used the Learning Career Assess Scale (LCAS; Unno 2011; Unno et al. 2013a). The sample consisted of 507 (7th grade), 451 (9th grade), and 424 (university freshmen) students from all over ROK. ROK has revised its national PE curriculum on an unprecedented scale and prepared to manage the curriculum quality. The survey responses showed significant differences between male and female students in the three dimensions of Learning Product, Learning Attitude, and Teachers’ Instruction. These differences existed at all school stages. Middle school students had the lowest scores for most factors, but we could not identify the cause of the decline of scores in this school stage. As significant differences found in all the dimensions of LCAS, it seems that an issue for PE curriculum management in ROK is how to reduce these differences using evidence concerning the condition of students’ learning in PE class.

This study clarifies the merits and demerits of replacing questionnaires with tablet PCs in professional sports game spectator surveys. Although there are issues to be dealt with such as cost, rainy weather, and radio wave environment, it became clear that Digital survey is enabled researchers and business parsons to improve survey accuracy, reduce burden on investigators, immediate reporting and data sharing of survey results. As a result, the survey time was reduced by 55.5%.