The purposes of this study were to develop a physical activity scale for elementary school children, and to examine the relationship between their daily physical activity and stress responses. In Study 1, subjects were 234 pupils (123 boys and 111 girls) in Grade 4 though 6 in elementary school. The pupils completed a battery of questionnaires in the classroom. Factor analysis revealed that the physical activity scale had a single-factor structure that consisted of 5 factors: physical education class, recess, lunch, after school and the evening. Three hundred and six elementary school children (Grades 4 though 6; 157 boys and 149 girls) participated in Study 2, the results of a correlation analysis of the relationship between daily physical activities and stress responses indicated that the amount of daily physical activity was consistently correlated with the stress response subscales: physical states, depressive-anxious feeling, irritated-angry feeling and helplessness. It was concluded that the increase of physical activity improves children's mental health.

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The aim of this study was to clarify the effects of bean-moving tasks on autonomic nervous activities and to confirm that these tasks are suitable for occupational therapy. We investigated three versions of bean-moving tasks, each task lasting for a period of 5 minutes. Twelve healthy participants were instructed to move beans with wooden chopsticks from one box to another in the easy task, to move them with lacquered chopsticks in the difficult task, and to perform the easy bean-moving task together with a stimulus-discrimination task in the dual-task situation. Performance was significantly lower for the difficult task compared to the other tasks. Heart rate increased during the dual task in association with the higher mental workload, motivation, and arousal. In addition, a positive skin potential response frequently occurred during the dual task, indicating a higher arousal. Based on these results, we conclude that the tasks used in this study are suitable for occupational therapy and should be performed in the order of easy, difficult, and dual-tasks to evoke different autonomic nervous activities.

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In this study, we investigated the relationship between the amount of physical touch received from parents and children's psychological adjustment. Two hundred thirteen university students and 69 clients in a department of psychosomatic medicine were asked to complete questionnaires on touch and body awareness (STAI-T, and SDS). The results were as follows; (1) Fathers touch their children less regardless of sex, while mothers touch their daughters more than their sons. (2) Child rearing attitudes are related to the frequency of touching by parents. (3) In female subjects, memory for parental touch is positively correlated with the level of psychological adaptation.

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In Western countries, it has been well documented that reciprocal social exchanges with family members enhance psychological adjustment among the elderly. This study examined (1) the association between reciprocal social exchange and psychological adjustment, (2) differences between family-dominant and non-family-dominant support networks and (3) whether reciprocal exchange was more critical in instrumental than in emotional support in Japanese subjects.
A total of 69 subjects, aged 65 or older, were individually interviewed regarding their social relationships using a self-report type method. Their psychological adjustment was assessed by self-esteem, self-efficacy, life-satisfaction, loneliness and depression scales. The results showed, as expected, that reciprocity of social exchange affected psychological adjustment. Moreover, reciprocal exchange was more important in instrumental than in emotional support. However, against our expectation, family-dominant networks were more efficient in enhancing psychological adjustment than non-family-dominant networks. Cultural and practical implications of this research are discussed.

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