Participants in this study were 101 preschool children (5-year-olds: 16 boys, 18 girls; 4-year-olds: 18 boys, 24 girls; 3-year-olds: 13 boys, 12 girls), and 4 preschool teachers. The preschoolers' relational aggression scale scores were used to identify High (n=35) and Low (n=40) groups. Empathy, moral judgment, and social information processing were assessed in the two groups, using questions developed from an integrated model of emotion processing and cognition in social information processing (Lemerise & Arsenio, 2000; Arsenio & Lemerise, 2004). Among 5-year-olds in the High aggression group there were significantly higher empathic-cognition scores than among the 3-year-olds in the Low Aggression group. There were no significance differences between the High and Low groups in emotion-sharing scores. These results suggest that children in the High group had higher levels of social competence.

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This study investigated toddlers' responses to a crying peer, to assess whether their responses were affected by the features of the peer and one's relationship with the peer. Two-year old toddlers were selected as participants because at that age young children begin to show a prosocial response to a crying peer and cry frequently. The behavior of 10 toddlers was videotaped during free-play time at a nursery school. Episodes in which a toddler cried and was responded to by a nearby toddler were examined. Using a generalized linear mixed model, we analyzed the nearby toddlers' responses to determine whether they varied according to the features of the crying toddler. Toddlers were more likely to respond prosocially to peers who seldom cried or attacked than frequent criers or attackers. In addition, toddlers were more likely to respond prosocially to a familiar toddler than to an unfamiliar one. These findings suggest that social evaluation of features of a crying peer and the child's relationship with the crying peer affects prosocial behavior in a group childcare setting.

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This study investigated the relation between day nursery and preschool teachers' thoughts about job stressors and their mental condition with regard to work. We asked 119 day nursery teachers and 114 preschool teachers to fill out a questionnaire, and conducted a path analysis on their data. Consistent with our hypothesis, day nursery teachers and preschool teachers' own thoughts about their work duties were found to mediate their mentality towards work. According to the results, "pride as a professional" and "relationship of trust with children and their guardians" brought about positive effects in terms of teachers' self-efficacy. "Shared understanding at work" reportedly tended to reduce burnout in day nursery teachers but not among preschool teachers. In addition, although job-related stress was reduced when teachers found work challenging and had a sense of job satisfaction, a collaborative working environment and understanding shared among teachers at work reduced stress in day nursery teachers but not preschool teachers. Our results suggest that stressors and job stress-related factors are occupation-specific, even though both day nursery teachers and preschool teachers are classified generally as childcare workers.

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Mothers access various kinds of information sources when they decide what to do with their infants. In this study, we investigated whether their access of information sources differs according to their internal working models of attachment. Participants were 29 mothers of 9-month old infants. We presented 10 video clips of 3- and 9- month olds with various emotions, and interviewed them about the reasons for what they did toward the infants in each video clip. Their answers were categorized and subjected to regression analysis with internal working models of attachment ("anxiety" and "avoidance"). The results showed that (1) for 3-month old infants, participants who were high in "anxiety" and low in "avoidance" referred more to infants' behavior, (2) for 9-months old infants, participants who were high in "anxiety" referred more to infants' emotions, while those who were high in "avoidance" referred more to their own subjectivity. These results indicated that mothers who are high in "anxiety" tend to access information sources of infants while those who are high in "avoidance" tend not to pay attention to information sources of infants.

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This study examined the influence of a school's culture of teaching on teacher development, analyzing the relationship between years of teaching experience and post-lesson discourse. We focused on the 'representation of practice' (Little, 2002) and proposed two hypotheses to study the effects of number of years teaching, both in total and at a specific school. At the school, teachers met regularly to witness a demonstration research lesson given by one teacher, after which they held a discussion about the research lesson. Data were gathered from records of 6 post-lesson conferences and via questionnaires about participants' memories of these conference discussions. The number of years at one's current school was significantly correlated with the number of statements about possibilities and problems of research lesson a teacher uttered during the post-lesson conference. It was also correlated with the number of statements teachers recalled as uttered by others during the post-lesson conference about problems, possibilities, and alternatives regarding the research lesson. The results indicated that research on teacher development should consider the influence of the in-school culture in which teachers reflect, practice, learn, and develop expertise.

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In Erikson's theory, a balance of trust vs. mistrust creates the basis for subsequent psycho-social development, and a mutual relationship with a maternal figure is an important factor in trust vs. mistrust. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 elderly participants who were 66-86 years old (mean age = 74.88, SD = 5.34). Participants had spent the same amount of time with a maternal figure in early childhood and had lost that maternal figure when the participants were middle-aged. The maternal figure in each elderly person's reminiscences was not necessarily his or her mother. If the participant sensed the debility of the maternal figure before the maternal figure approached death, then after the maternal figure was dying the participant would internalize memories of a good maternal figure. That followed one's recovery from grief and regret while bereaving for the maternal person, because of the participants' caring for the maternal figure. As an elderly person, each participant remembered having a good mutual relationship with the maternal figure.

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This study examined the development of personal narratives among 3-6 year-old preschoolers. The experimenter and children baked cakes, and children gave accounts of this experience to their mothers, in expressions such as "The experimenter spilled the eggs." Children's narratives were analyzed in terms of their coherence. According to the results, 3 year-old children described few events continuously, whereas 4 year-old children gave accounts of multiple events in temporal sequence. Children at ages 5-6 years gave narrations of events in terms of both causal and intentional relations. These results indicated that through the preschool period there is development in the meaning of experiences. Similarity in developmental changes has been noted in across cultures, suggesting a common factor in development. Narrative development in early childhood therefore is closely linked to development of self-recognition and understanding of the other's mind.

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This study examined how Japanese graduate and undergraduate students perceive and segment English sounds (consonants and vowels) with in words. Sixty students were provided with a memory span task in which they repeated aloud English words. There were words with five types of phonological structures: CV, CVC, CVCV, CVCC, and CVCVC. The followings were the main results: (1) Memory spans for CVC and CVCV which were on the same level, were longer than those for CVCC and CVCVC; (2) The duration of spoken words by students showing a segmentation pattern of mora tended to be lengthier than those of the original sounds, or those by students showing mixed segmentation patterns of mora and syllables; and (3) Students obtaining higher scores on the TOEIC showed more segmentation patterns of syllables. These results suggest that the Japanese rhythm of mora had an enduring influence on perception and segmentation of English sounds, among Japanese students who had studied English more than six years. The acquisition of segmentation patterns of syllables may be one key to improvement of English ability.

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Forty-six children from 3 to 6 years of age participated in two false belief tasks, role play, and pretend play in Experiment 1. The results revealed a significant correlation between false belief and role play behavior, but not between false belief and pretend play. In Experiment 2, 38 children from 3 to 5 years of age were assigned to a role play training group, pretend play training group, or a control group. After five training sessions, the role play training group, but not the pretend play training group or the control group, increased their scores on the false belief task. Based on the results of Experiments 1 and 2, it is concluded that role play, but not pretend play, is a precursor of the acquisition of theory of mind.

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The present study examined the relationships between narcissism and ego identity during the developmental transition from adolescence to early adulthood. Samples of 371 undergraduate and graduate students between the ages of 18-25 years (adolescents) and 352 adults between the ages of 26-35 years (early adulthood) completed a questionnaire which consisted of narcissism scales and an ego identity scale. The results of correlation analyses showed that multidimensional narcissistic indices for two dispositions ("need for attention and praise" and "lack of empathy") were more strongly correlated with ego identity for the early adult sample than for the adolescent sample. In addition, the results of a multiple-group analysis showed that these two narcissistic dispositions predicted ego identity more negatively in the model for the early adulthood data than in the model for the adolescent data. These results indicate that diminishment of these two narcissistic dispositions is a developmental task of adolescence, and that if the young person's efforts to overcome these dispositions were to fail, the formulation of ego identity could be more difficult.

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