The present study examined the development of self-regulation and mother-toddler conflict. Three mother-toddler dyads were observed at home on a monthly basis, between the ages of 12 to 24 months. Toddlers' behavior was coded when they checked with their mothers visually before pointing to objects, and for self-regulation and resistance to maternal intervention. As toddlers began to look at their mothers before pointing, they showed self-initiated inhibition of previously prohibited behavior. As mothers began to tell toddlers their behaviors were inappropriate, the toddlers became aware that their mothers were intervening. In addition, when toddlers appeared to tease their mothers, the mothers responded to them playfully, making it easy to express verbal protests and draw their focus away from the prohibited behaviors.

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This study investigated how children participate in triadic parent-sibling interactions. Twenty families with 30-month-old target boys and older brothers were observed at home during semi-structured free play with toys. Each pair of siblings had two sessions, one with their mother and one with their father. Analyses explored the frequencies of utterances addressed to others, utterances used when children joined in conversations with others, and speech acts between siblings. Children's intentions regarding conversational participation differed with mothers and fathers, and parents behaved differently with younger and older siblings. Mothers talked to 30-month-old children significantly more than to older children. Siblings produced more utterances with each other during the mother's session, and fathers were less responsive to the target children than were mothers. Younger children made more spontaneous utterances seeking to get involved in conversations, and used longer sentences, during the sessions with fathers. These findings suggest that the linguistic environment parents provide at home gives their children an opportunity to practice communication with people who have different knowledge and intentions.

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The purpose of this investigation was to clarify the relationship between the characteristics of children in Homes for Juvenile Training and Education, and their delinquency experiences, emotions, and memories of abuse. The Child Behavior Checklist/4-18 (CBCL) questionnaire was distributed to staff members of four Homes of 78 children, and to teachers of 88 children in ordinary junior high school classes. The CBCL scale scores for "Stay Indoors," "Anxiety and Depression," "Delinquent Behaviors," "Aggressive Behaviors" were higher for children at the four Homes than for children in ordinary junior high schools. The sub-group of physically abused children and non-abused children had higher scores for anxiety and depression than those of the other group. In the case of children in the Homes, the issue of memories of abuse is a hidden problem, but this research suggested that staff members at such Homes should pay attention to such memories and provide children with appropriate psychological support.

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This study investigated the effects of task importance and social influences on conformity among young adolescents. In response to a number of questions which differed in task importance, 9th graders (N=218) chose one of two answer options. Two experiments examined normative (Experiment 1) and informational (Experiment 2) influences, using questions about students' attitudes and logical reasoning, respectively. Students in the experimental condition received options along with displays of apparently normative answers for their own age group, and after a week they returned to make choices without any normative displays. They were compared with students in a control condition who received unbiased alternatives. The results showed that students in the experimental condition tended to choose the biased alternative for attitudinal questions of both high and low importance, and they did so again a week later without normative information. Girls were more likely to choose the biased alternative than boys. The data suggest that especially under normative influences young adolescents show strong conformity that continues long-term as privately accepted attitudes. The results are discussed in terms of a self-categorization framework (Hogg, 1992).

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The purpose of the present study was to examine the development of cruising, which had seldom been the focus of research on motor development. Naturalistic longitudinal observations were carried out in the homes of four infants, from the perspective of ecological psychology. Cruising was observed in different forms, depending on the environment. So locomotor development should be examined from a perspective of ecological psychology. Cruising behaviors were examined in terms of manual contact with objects, body direction, and duration and frequency of hand/foot motion. The results revealed a transition from quadrupedal to bipedal locomotion types in manual contact with objects. A relation between body direction and exploration behavior was found. Moreover, a bias in laterality was seen in the direction of cruising. It was suggested that the coordination of arms and lower limbs played an important role in the development of proficiency in cruising.

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Objects arrayed on a table were first shown to each of 19 participants, ages 5 to 6 years, and then the objects were coven by an upended box. Participants next moved from the front to the right side or the opposite side of the table, and responded in verbal and spatial manners about their perspectives of the objects before and after movement. Children performed well in both manners regarding post-rotation views, despite the fact that children made many spatial errors in their pre-rotation views, and those errors coincided with their post-rotation views. The results indicated that children's difficulty with spatial tasks may be attributed to their physical use of representations in spatial manners, rather than to limitations in maintaining their own perspective.

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This study examined the underlying causes of children's ability to use abstract metaphors in everyday situations. Participants were 4-5 and 5-6 year old children, who were assigned to three conditions: symbolic play, context, and one-sentence conditions. In the symbolic play condition, children interacted with an experimenter and comprehended metaphors based on non-verbal contextual cues. Metaphoric sentences were presented without interactions in the other two conditions, but with verbal contextual cues in the context condition. The results indicated that children could comprehend abstract metaphors better during symbolic play than under the other two conditions. Further analyses suggested that emotions help children comprehend abstract metaphors.

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