When children are frustrated, they respond verbally in various ways. This study focused on the features of responses by foreigners and natives living in Japan. Developmental factors and the duration of residence in Japan were considered as factors which influence reactions to frustration. Participants (5-6 year old children and 9-12 year old pupils) attended in the same Japanese city : international schools (n=46), schools for Korean residents (n=57), and schools for native Japanese (n=59). The experiments were conducted using 12 drawings about frustration situations. The verbal responses were analyzed with Varimax rotation, and a four-factor solution was obtained. The factors were self-assertion, warning/complaint, self-repression, and apology/gratitude. The results showed that Japanese children scored significantly higher on the self-repression in the frustration caused by friends, while those of international schools scored higher on the self-assertion. The results of pupils didn't show the differeces between three schools. The study also indicated that the responses of Korean residents both children and pupils resembled those of native Japanese. According to the duration of one's residence in Japan, the difference of the responses was seen in the frustration caused by friends.

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This study examined cohort and gender differences in age identity and related factors from life-span developmental perspective. Participants were 1,842 people (1,026 females and 816 males) ranging in age from 8 to 92 years. Interviews and self-report questionnaires concerned three aspects of age identity as expressed by "How old I feel" (Self/Others/Hope), and "Ideal Age". Discrepancies between chronological age and subjective age among participants' cohorts showed that subjective age transcended chronological age. In addition, identification changed from the older identity to the younger identity. This identity change was observed in males in the agec ohort of 18-24 years, and in the female 13-17 year old cohort. Though age identity was significantly affected by education, health, self-esteem, Type-A and gender role, score, chronological age was the most important intervening factor. This suggests the need to consider time perception in the study of subjective aging.

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Informal mathematical knowledge (IMK), constructed in early childhood, provides an important basis for arithmetic skills. This article shows the features of IMK in relation to recent reseach on number sense and skills. Findings concerned each of the 3 categories of IMK. The most basic IMK was single-number relations, and consisted of number conversion skills which are based on experiences converting numerals to sets. Dual-number relations involved comparisons of 2 numbers. Four year olds tended to judge magnitudes using a primitive base ten system, and their daily experiences reflected a sense of number conservation. Three-number relations reffered to calculations. The difficulty of calculations for children depended on the medium used to represent numerical magnitude in the tasks. Sets of objects were easier to use than numerals, and numerals were easier to use than written numbers. Children's numerical operations were like transforming images of sets. In sum, the division of IMK into 3 categories showed that the role of numerals was important for each category.

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This study examined the impact of correct inferences of others' feelings on preschool children's prosocial behavior. In Experiment 1,49 4-year olds and 46 5-year olds were divided into 3 groups and presented with one of 3 videotaped prosocial episodes. There were 2 cues to a character's sad feelings : the character's facial expression and the situation. In Episode 1 the cues were congruent (sad situation + sad face), but in Episode 2 (sad situation + smiling) and 3 (happy situation + sad face) the cues were incongruent. Children were asked how the character in the video felt, what they would do to the character, and children were also observed as to whether they shared their stickers with the character. When the cues were incongruent, correct infeiences were related to prosocial judgments. In Experiment 2, 4-yearolds (n=53) and 5-year olds (n=51) were divided into 2 groups and presented with Episode 3, either with or without an explanation of the character's feelings. Children were asked what they would do to the character and observed to see if they shared stickers. Prosocial judgments and behavior were significantly more frequent when there was an explanation. The results of this study suggest that under conditions when facial expression and the situation are incongruent, prosocial judgment and behavior require a specific social-cognitive skill : "affective reconciliation."

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Three experiments examined the development of children's causal reasoning in biology. The focus of the experiments was how children come to understand the human non-involvement principle which postulates that humans play no role in the creations of the properties of animals. Children (ages of 3-6) were asked, for example, why the nose of an elephant is long, and selected an explanation which they considered to be correct from among the presented alternatives. Children appeared to understood the principle by the age of 5, but the experience of raising an animal, recognition of the functional roles of a property, and the familiarity of target objects did not facilitate their understanding the principle. In addition, the similarity of target animals to humans did not influence their inferences. These results are evidence of an innate principle which constrains children's causal reasoning related to the field of biology.

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Recent studies have suggested that spatial localization by young children is disturbed when there is a mismatch between encoding and retrieval perspectives. Experiment 1 examined the ability of 2 and 3 year olds to find a hidden object after having inspected the spatial layout from various viewpoints. Specifically, after looking down on an array of four locations, children either made a 0- or 180-degree movement around the array and then searched for a hidden object from either above or aside the array.Theresults showed that 3 year olds could compensate for both vertical and horizontal displacements, while 2 year olds only had the ability of spatial memory. In Experiment 2, those children who could memorize the layout in Experiment 1 were tested for the effect of a 90-degree movement, to examine their strategies for spatial localization after movement. There were significantly more errors for the 90-degree movement condition than for the 180-degree movement. The results suggest that the strategy used by children was dimension-coordination rather than visual-image manipulation.

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