Many everyday scripts seem to be acquired in early childhood. But when they get associated with goals other than the original one, "meanings" based on those goals may be ascribed to the script. In this study, a "dining script" is examined for its developmental course. A dining activity carries several meanings, one of which is called here as "social" (e. g., socializing with other participants), and another is "physiological" (e. g., nutritious). Second, 4th, and 6th graders, and university undergraduates participated in the study. In the first experiment, they were asked to give explanations about a dining procedure and its physiological and social meanings. In the second, they were presented some eating scenes, some of which had a complete procedure but negative physiological or social meanigs, and some other have an incomplete procedure but positive physiological or social meanings, and were asked to judge whether the characters were dining or not. The results showed that the amount of knowledge about dining increased with age and that the nature of knowledge used in the explanations and judgements changed with age from a script procedure itself to the scriptal knowledge about "meanings".

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A behavioral analysis of the strange situation was made with 105 one-year-olds, 100 two-year-olds, and 59 three-year-olds served as subjects. The results showed that throughout all the episodes of the strange situation, three exploratory behaviors ; exploratory locomotion, exploratory manipulation, and visual exploration, increased with age, and so did simling and vocalization directed toward the stranger, but crying decreased with age. A factor analysis on the data of all the subjects was conducted. Seven factors were extracted, five of which were highly related with the episodes. For example, the first factor was closely tied to exploratory behaviors observed in episodes six, seven and eight. The analysis elucidated how the episodes of the strange situation influenced children's behaviors and how the episodes themselves were related to each other.

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The purposes of this investigation were to examine the effects of the teachers' interventions on the object conflicts between young children in a nursery school and their changes with children's ages. Subjects were eight children and their two teachers. The main data were obtained from the observations of free play in their classroom through bimonthly taken videorecording sessions. Each session lasted 15 minutes. The period of observation was from May 1988 to March 1989. The main changes with age (14-, 18-, 22-months-old) were as follows: (a) The rate of teacher's intervention in the object conflicts between children increased. (b) The rate of "the intervention with mediated functions" (ex., descriptions of the behaviors of the other, and direction for request) increased, but "the rate of physical intervention" (ex., forbidding, and giving another object) decreased. (c) The rate of the children's "rejections" to teacher's intervention increased.

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The present study examined the role of social interaction in the development of preschool children's cognitive and social cognitive competences. In the cognitive-motor coordination task, children were asked to cooperate with each other to carry out three kinds of activities (pulling, releasing, or blocking of string) to lead a pen target along a predetermined route. Taking into accout the level of subjects' understanding structure of the task, two experimental groups were formed. In group 1 (2H1L), two advanced children were placed together with a less advanced, while in group 2 (1H2L), an advanced child was together with two less advanced. The results suggested that through experiencing interaction with children in the different level of knowledge structure, they got both the improvement of procedual knowledge concerning the task and the modification of "self-other perspectives coordination" for understanding interpersonal cognitive processes. These progresses, however, were varied with the extent to which children could overcome their egocentric negotiation starategies when confronted with socio-cognitive conflict embeded in social interaction.

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Young children's ability to organize a spatial array independent of its surroundings was investigated in the context of Minsky's frame theory. Five to six year-old children were asked to reconstruct a display of three objects arranged in the form of a triangle, after turning their own bodies around. Experiment 1 demonstrated that many children produced a mirror image of the original array. Experiment 2 showed that children made the mirror-image response much less frequently (1) when the stimulus array was covered with a big blind at the beginning, or (2) when children's point of view was externalized in terms of a stuffed toy which was placed in front of them. These results suggest that a "view frame," which is usually embedded in the "global spatial frame," can function well independent of it even in young children.

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The purpose of this study is to examine two hypotheses on personality relating to longevity and its relation to successful aging, using as subjects 82 centenarians and 605 community aged whose ages ranged from 60 to 89 years old We used Bem Sex Role Inventory and Bortner Pattern A Behavior Scale to measure personality, and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, Cattell Anxiety Scale, PGC Morale Scale, and subjective health rating to measure successful aging. We observed more femininity than androgyny among centenarians which suggested femininity related to the longevity. More type B's were seen in the centenarians than 60's. Women showed higher scores of femininity and type B than men. It was confirmed that androgyny are psychologically most adaptive in old age. Differential psychological adaptation styles were displayed among the sexes. Type B's showed lower self-esteem than type A's in women while type B's manifested lower anxiety than type A's in men.

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