In the previous paper (ITO, 1980), we have dealt with results of four attitude scales of 6th grade elementary school children toward arithmetic in Japan. The results of that study have led to conclude that four attitude scales (Dutton Attitude Scale, Aiken Attitude Scale, McCallen and Brown's SD, Anttonen's SD) measure a general psychological dimension of "enjoyment of arithmetic" fairly well. In the present paper, we deal with children's relation between enjoyment and value of arithmetic. The value scale toward arithmetic developed by Aiken (1974) was administered to 79 elementary school children. This paper came to a conclusion that enjoyment and value are independent and significant dimensions of the attitudes toward arithmetic held by elementary school children.

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The purpose of this study was, involving subjects who were ninth grade students attending the Attached Lower Secondary School of the College of Education, Akita University, Japan, to obtain the relationship between attitudes toward and achievement of mathematics, and effect of attitudes toward mathematics and a factor on advancement of achievement on achievement of mathematics, mainly describing the result of data analysis. The factor analysis of their mathematical attitudinal scores obtained under the administration of the MSD, which is an instrument developed by Minato, revealed that their attitudes were similar to those of prospective elementary school teachers. The examination of the effect of attitudes toward mathematics and a factor on advancement of achievement on achievement of mathematics was dealt. It was also revealed that there existed effect of attitudes toward mathematics on achievement of mathematics and that there was a fairly high correlation between them.

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In my previous paper (Tani, 1980) related to the adaptation process of perceptual-motor skill learning, the following hypothesis was tested. If skills are learned only as fixed motor patterns, then a low performance level may result in an adaptation situation. On the other hand, when skills are learned as flexible motor patterns supporting delicate adjustments, a higher performance level in an adaptation situation may result. And it was thought that in order to acquire flexible motor programs, some degree of freedom is necessary in response choice during the learning process. Three learning conditions based on the degree of freedom in response choice were set up and the experiment was conducted in the real-life situation of the classroom. In general, the results showed support for the hypothesis, in that the group which performed under the higher degree of freedom showed a high performance level in the adaptation situation. But one problem emerged. Although all three groups showed a decrease in performance in relation to timing in the adaptation situation, this tendency was stronger in the group which performed under the higher degree of freedom. Taking into consideration the above results, the following hypothesis was constructed. In order to acquire flexible motor programs, the degree of freedom in response choice is an important factor. But in some stage of the learning process, it is important to learn motor programs that are relatively fixed. Twenty four female undergraduate students participated in this experiment. They were divided into two groups (G.A and G.B) each with twelve subjects. The task was a serial learning of basketball skills. Five dependent measures were analyzed in this experiment: number of trials, execution time of trials, successful trials, anticipation and timing. The results can be summarized as follows. The group which performed under the higher degree of freedom (G.B) showed a higher performance level in relation to all the above mentioned measures. And in relation to timing, in contrast to the results obtained in the previous experiment, a higher performance level was retained in the adaptation situation in comparison to the group that performed under a lower degree of freedom (G.A). The results showed support for the hypothesis and were interpreted as evidence in favor of the assumption that as the teaching program becomes stricter, the degree of freedom of the learner's response choice becomes lower, and as a consequence it becomes more and more difficult to acquire flexible motor programs.

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This study was conducted to examine a simple method to record the relations among velocity, step frequency and step length in a-100-meter run with a hand-operated stop- watch and a measure according to the results of the previous paper on the relations among them. The errors in timing using a hand-operated stopwatch were also examined here compared with the records clocked with an electric timer. The results were summarized as follows; 1) The velocity, step frequency and step length curves gained through the simple recording method with a hand-operated stopwatch at different five points (25, 35, 50, 80, 100 meters from the start line) and the actual measurement of step length were compared with the curves gained from the basograms measured in the previous paper. As a result, almost the same curve patterns were obtained although some problems were left, for instance, because of the records timed and measured at the respective points were the mean ones, and the errors in timing with a hand-operated stopwatch which are mentioned below. This simple recording method, therefore, could be utilized in the daily classes conveniently and effectively in order to let the students grasp the progress in their own running. 2) A general tendency was found that the records timed with a hand-operated stopwatch were shortened much more than those timed with an electric timer. The errors in timing were greater when the timekeeper was a junior high school student (i.e., the records were shortened about 230 msec at the 100-meter point) rather than when the timekeeper was an official judge authorized by Japan Amateur Athletic Federation (i.e., the records were shortened about 163 msec at the same point). Also, another tendency was seen, whether the timekeeper was a student or an official judge in this case, the farther the recording point became, the greater the errors in timing would become. 3) The errors in timing with a hand-operated stopwatch by a junior high school student were varied both intraindividually and interindividually. In order to reduce the variance to a minimum, it should be of great importance not only to make the students familiarized with the recording method, but also to make the same timekeeper record the time of the same runner at the same point.

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"Meshi" is a most popular rice cooking in Japan. In this cooking, there are many interesting phenomena, which have been lectured on the students of elementary and junior high schools to teach the cooking procedure. The reported experimental procedures to show these phenomena have now been reexamined. It was proved that the amount of water absorbed into grains of rice and the subsequent swelling can be measured at room temperature by using the commercially available rice without any treatment. To boil the rice in a beaker, the lid was improved as shown in Fig. 1.

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In this experiment, when learning the implicit meanings of English verb meanings in simple sentences of the forms S+V+O/S+V (e.g. people (saving) CONSERVE natural resources.), senior high school subjects were asked to use adjectives given in parentheses to help them remember the verb meanings. These adjectives chosen on the basis of a series of past investigations conducted by the author were assumed to identify one of the semantic features imposed by verbs upon the subjects/objects modified. Subjects claimed that such a means of memorization was effective and subjects who used this means appeared to do much better than those who did not. As anticipated, they formed to themselves an image of the verb in each sentence by using the test adjectives, and the results of delayed testings implied that adjectives related to verbs played a helpful role in memorizing verb meanings.

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[in Japanese]

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