A trend toward Japanese students' disliking natural science courses has become salient in recent years. This study was based on E. F. Keller's theory claiming that child's preference for natural science is related to his/her ability to view the mother objectively. Japanese adolescents are especially known to be excessively attached to their mothers, as evident from the presence of the term boshi-mitchaku, which describes overly dependence of the child on the mother. In this study, the effect of boshi-mitchaku on preference for natural science courses was examined by comparing college students majoring in management and engineering. Boshi-mitchaku was found to be stronger in management students than those in engineering, and the latter had greater liking for science courses.

　　Furthermore, the tendency for females to dislike natural sciences seemed to be due more to their acceptance of gender stereotypes than to their incompatibility to the field of study.

　　This study cleared the characteristics of talk about internal states in mother-child and father-child interaction in the same setting. Twenty-one 2-and 3-year olds were observed with their mothers and their fathers in clay modeling situation at home. The results showed that parents and children mentioned desires more flequently than other internal state terms in the clay modeling, but there were no significant differences according to parental sex. In addition, relational patterns of reference to internal states were similar between mother-child and father-child dyads. It may be possible that the fathers, same as the mothers, play an important role in the development of children's understanding of the internanal states.

　　This paper is to report the follow-up of the school refusal children. The purpose of this paper is to describe the relation between the development of school refusal children and their mother's state of mind by interviews.

　　A similar study was reported in the previous study, where it was described that the children have developed if their mother had strong “operational expectation”, and the children have developed little if their mother had little “operational expectation”. However the thesis left much to be desired. The classification of school refusal and mother's state of mind was not examined thoroughly. Accordingly, this paper is based on these points. Moreover it described the point for the support of school refusal chilren.

　　It was found that they could be divided into 3 groups: ① the core group: those whose major problem was an absence, ② the peripheral group: who had mental illness besides school refusal, and ③ the handicapped group: who had physically or mentally handicaps.

　　For mothers, school refusal of their child is an experience of object loss. Mothers of the core group have been shocked and tried to get their child to go to school by some means or other. After that, mothers have given up to make their child to go to school and have been able to rear their child in an appropriate way. And many children of this group adapt well to the society at the point of the interview. This process is similar to the mourning process.

　　Mothers of the peripheral group did not try to get their child to go to school. They also could not experience the mourning process. Emotional relationship between mothers and their child was insufficient. Many children in this group did not adapt to the society at the point of the interview.

　　Mothers of the handicapped group did not talk about the mourning process at the interviews, but emotional relationship between mothers and their child was not insufficient.

　　This paper described the point for the support of school refusal children. It is hoped that mothers can face their sorrow. It is also important that mothers can appreciate their child's condition.

　　The purposes of this study are to develop a scale which measures the interparental relationships perceived by their children (The Child's Perception of Interparental Relationships Scale) and to find out how the interparental and parent-child relationships affect the child's mental health.

　　First, the preliminary questionnaires of The Child's Perception of Interparental Relationships Scale were administered to 162 college students. The revised forms of this test were administered to 259 junior high school students. Consequently, The Child's Perception of Interparental Relationships Scale contains two subscales including 7 items for the affection scales and 7 items for the conflict-solving scales.

　　Secondly, samples (259 junior high school students, their 245 mothers and 152 fathers) answered the questionnaires and how the interparental and parent-child relationships affect the child's mental health was analyzed based on the perception of children.

　　The following results were found: (1) When children recognize their parent's relationships as affectionate and good in conflict solving, their mental health cultivates through the closeness toward their parents. However, which parent-child relationship factors (father-child or mother-child relationship) is important vary and depend on children's sex and grade. (2) The direct correlation of interparental relationships to child's mental health was detected in the result of third-year junior high school students. (3) Girls' mental health was more affected by the interparental and parent-child relationships than boys' mental health.