The present study aimed at investigating the acquisition process of number conservation by 2 training experiments.
Ninety-eight 4-6 year-old children, who had been non-conservers at a Pre-test, served as Ss of Exp. I. Eighteen out of them could anticipate correctly changes of the number of a collection under transformations including addition and subtraction and spatial rearrangement of elements simultaneously. They were divided into a gr. and b gr.(Each had 9 Ss) The remaining 80 children could only anticipate numerical changes without spatial rearrangement. They were divided into a, b, c, d and e grs.(Each had 16 Ss) Each 2 children assigned to a and b gr. did not participate in the training session.
Five different training procedures were adopted: Practice in conflict situations with external reinforcement (Ss of a and a grs. received this method of training), Practice in conflict situations without external reinforcement (b and b grs.), Practice in reinforced conservation situations (c gr.), Practice in mixed situations with reinforcement (d gr.), and Practice in conflict situations without reinforcement+ some auxiliary steps (e gr.). Each training procedure consisted of 2 sessions of 24 trials, and was given Ss on 2 consecutive days.
Fourty-three Ss out of the 94 trained acquired conservation response, i. e., responded correctly to all of the conservation items (4 in number) at the Immediate Post-test. Thirty-nine of them retained conservation response at the Follow-up Test administered 50 days later. They were given a generalization test of conservation, including 3 types of conservation tasks i) extended in number of elements, ii) with the inequal standard collection and iii) without the standard collection, i. e., identityof a collection before and after rearrangement of elements. Twenty-six among them responded correctly to all of the items of the generalization test. Further, it was attempted to extinguish conservation response by false-reinforcement procedure similar to that of Smedslund. Twenty of them could not be deceived and retained conservation.
c gr., a gr. and d gr. had more conservation respondents than the other 2 groups. d gr., a gr. and c gr. had more conservers who could apply the, conservation principle to the generalization test. a gr. and d gr. had slightly more Ss who showed resistance to extinction.
These results suggest that conservation of number was diffcult to learn by Practice in conflict situations without external reinforcement. It is markedly different with previous studies by Smedslund and by us. At the same time, performance of children who had been superior at the Pretest(a & b), showed improvement of equal degree with and without reinforcement. External reinforcement had not a differentiating effect for them.
It was assumed that, without external reinforcement, b & e grs. Ss continued to make perceptiondominated response to conflict situations because of insufficient coordination of inter-number relations. Therefore, Exp. II was undertaken, in which 2 training procedures were to be compared: Practice in conflict situations with and without external reinforcement, both having auxiliary steps for teaching inter-number relations with reinforcement.
The result of Exp. II, however, showed ineffectiveness of Practice without reinforcement. Again, reinforced practice produced more conservers than the non-reinforced counterpart.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

This study aimed at investigating the process of acquisition of water surface representation. Children were shown the test papers (a),(b) and (c) on which were drawn the bottles tilted at the angle of 0, 22.5, 45, 67.5, 90, 112.5, 135, 157.5 and 180, and were asked to draw the water surface in these bottles. In test (a) 9 round bottles were drawn on the horizontal table, in test (b) 9 square bottles on the horizontal table and in test (c) 9 square bottles on the 22.5° tilted stand.
Ss were 413 children in every other grade from 1st in elementary school through 9th in junior high school. Ss were classified into 5 stages according to the quality of their drawings.
Stage I (12 Ss): Water surface is drawn parallel to the bottom of bottle intest (b).
Stage II(77 Ss): Water surface in the bottles is drawn obliquely in test (a) and (b).
Stage III(65 Ss)Water surface is drawn horizontally only in test (a).
Stage IV(131 Ss): Water surface is drawn horizontally in both test (a) and (b).
Stage V(122 Ss): Water surface is drawn horizontally in all three tests.
Most of 1st graders belonged to StageII, 3rd graders were distributed almost equally from Stage II through Stage IV, and most of 5th graders were in StageIV. It was not until 9th grade in junior high school that 2/3 of Ss attained StageV. This result that the chronological age to reach Stage IV was 9-11 years old agreed with Piaget's findings, but the level of Stage V was not investigated experimentally in his studies. It was shown with regard to the attainment of StageV that water surface representation in drawing was easily influenced by the cue of the oblique table line on which bottles were placed.
Then, 20 Ss, that is, 5 Ss in each stage except Stage V were trained to attain higher stage. The core of the method of training was the introduction of cognitive conflict to the Ss. Program of training to develop the Ss from Stage I to Stage II was as follows. S had a dialogue with E, observed the surface of blue plasticine half-filled in the bottle which S himself tilted every 22. 5°, and was asked what happened in the bottle. Program of training to develop Ss to Stage III was as follows. The S observed the surface of water in the round bottle which S himself tilted according to the direction of E roughly to match every 22. 5°on the horizontal top of a desk, and was asked to compare the water surface with the horizontal line drawn on the background paper. Training to develop to Stage IV and StageV was undertaken in the same way as above mentioned except that the square bottle were used instead of round ones and that it was placed on the horizontal top of the desk in the former or on the oblique stand in the latter. The results were as follows. All the Ss gained in the number of correct responses, but those who remained in the same stage were 5 in number, those who developed 1 stage were 9, and those who developed 2 stages or more were 6. These results to some extent support the hypothesis that it is possible to promote the development of water surface representation by introducing cognitive conflict.

View full abstract

The aim of this study is to reveal two or three aspects of the interpretations on the affective meanings of six schematized sketches representing various facial expressions by 288 subjects(153 boys and 135 girls)ranging in ages from 3 to 22, and in grades from kindergarten to seniors in college. In discerning the ability of these subjects in identification of these facial expressions, two methods were applied. One is the choice method, under which subjects were given a series of facial sketches from which to select the appropriate one, when an expression was described by the experimenter (joy, sadness, anger, etc.). The other is the free naming method, under which naming of the sketch items given was allowed. Also their preference of six facial expressions was investigated by the ranking method, and then their perception of the facial sketches was examined under the free naming method. The experiments were carried out individually with all subjects. The results obtained were as follows:
1. With advance in age and grade there is significant increase in ability of the subjects in correct identification of the affective meanings of facial expressions under both choice and free naming methods. The ability, however, does not increase at the same rate through all ages.
2. At younger ages there are more correct answers under the choice method than under the free naming method.
3. The majority of three-year-old children can already interpret correctly through facial sketches the meaning of so-called fundamental feelings in Japanese: ‘joy’,‘anger’,‘sadness’ and ‘happiness’.
4. Under the choice method there are confusions between joy and happiness, between sadness and sulkiness, and between sulkiness and anger. These are confusions between pleasant emotions and unpleasant emotions.
5. The degree of difficulty in identification ranges from anger, sadness, joy (laughter), happiness to sulkiness. This order is approximately the same under both methods.
6. Girls are more accurate judges of facial expressions of feeling than boys are.(This is especially Significant under the choice method.).
7. The degree of preference of facial expressions ranges from joy (laughter) and happiness (pleasant expression group), sulkiness and expressionlessness (neutral expression group) to sadnessand anger (unpleasant expression group).
8. The perception of expressions as actions (‘laughing’,‘weeping’ etc.) is superior to the perception of expressions as emotions (‘joy’,‘sadness’ etc.) in infancy, 3-5 years old. But with increasing age, the former decreases and the latter increases. The matter-of fact or colorless perception,(‘sleeping’,‘ordinary face’ etc.) is inferior to the expression perception in all ages.

View full abstract

I. Purpose and Method
In the present study the author examines the developmental sequences of number concept and clarifies the congnitive characteristics of number in retarded children. The experiments tried hereconsist of the following three fields.
1) Experiment I, to analyse the results from items concerning both mathematical abilities (i. e. naming number words, countings, the addition and subtraction operations, etc.) and the logical operations of number (i. e. conservation).
2) Experiment II, to examine the effects of the verbal instructions for countings, on the recognition of equivalences of perceptually different sets.
3) Experiment III, to practise an experimental education for equivalences of groups and examine the developmental aspects of acquiring conservation of number. We set the IS group of children (to be verbally instructed with therules of conservation-reversibility and the like-), and the US group(not to be instructed with them) in this training in order to study the children's self-instructive behaviours. Here children are generally taught equivalences of sets (consisting of the discrete and the continuous) by one-one correspondences and counting concrete objects. Tests are administered four times: pre-test, middle-test, post-test, and retention-test.
Subjects are 111 retarded children (morons) of special classes (IQ: 60, 79, MA: 3-9) and 60 normal children (in total). Main findings may be summarized as follows.
II. Results
1) There are three stages in the developmental sequences of the number concept of retarded children.
The first: (up to about MA 4). Equivalence is responded to on the basis of perceptual uniformity. Thus a child can recognize equivalences only when the elements and the arrangements of two groups are the same.
The second: (from MA 4 to MA 7). Visual perceptual cues of a group seem to become half eliminated. A child can generalize any elements as a class “1”, count objects and recognize equivalences only in the same arrangements.
The third: (after MA 7 or 8). The relationship between groups begins to be conceptualized, some addition and subtraction operations are understood, and then conservation can be acquired.
2) Retarded children may be shorter of selfinstructions for countings and too much influenced by their perceptions to compare the class exactly, while their levels of success can be raised to a degree by the instructions for cou-ntings that an experimenter gives.
3) The acquisition of conservation in the retarded depends upon their levels of learning experiences in mathematics.
4) Normal children, attaining the level of counting, can formulate for themselves, or solve the conservation problems using efficiently the instructions given verbally. However, ratarded children, who are at nearly the same levels of MAs and mathematics with the normal, can not do that. Retarded children, who can solve the addition and subtraction operations, acquire the concept of conservation while they receive that training. Then in this point, conservation is to be acquired faster to a degree by the experimental education. Still an essential requirement for children to acquire the concept (conservation) is to experience each step to it as definitely as possible.

View full abstract

This experiment was designed to examine the effects of verbal reinforcement combinations on discrimination learning in infants by the analysis of error factors and to compare those with the results in children (Matsuda & Matsuda, 1967, 196b).
S saw in front of him a series of pairs of figures which were two of three kinds, namely, circle, triangle and square, each of which was painted red, green, or yellow at random, and was asked to choose a figure from each pair which he thought correct. One of three colors was randomly set as the correct value. We set 9 trials as one block and defined the criterion of learning as the state of all correct responses in a block.
Besides three combinations of verbal reinforcement, that is, RW, RN, and NW, there are also RNw and NrW that were RN and NW in which S was instructed about meaning of N before-the beginning of learning.
The learning process of each S was analyzed into, error factors shown in Table 2 during10blocks. The results were as follows:
1. Ss under RW learned the slowest in the 5, groups (see Table 4). Under RN the rate of error responses decreased largely early in the period of learning, under RW, NrW, and NW they decreased largely toward the end of learning, and under RNw it decreased suddenly at the end of learning (see Fig. 1 and Table 5). During10blocks rates of error responses under RN were constantly smaller than those under other four groups, though it was not significant (see Fig. 2 and Table 6).
These findings are rather contrary to those in, children.
2. The rate of appearance of error factor I 1 went down to the level of the rate of error responses within 3 blocks, and there were few subjects who showed error factor I 2 and I 3 (see Table 7 and Fig. 3).
Therefore it seems that error factor I has little effect on performance of this learning.
3. In all groups, error factor II was stronger than II (see Fig. 4 and Table 8). In children only under RN and NW error factor II had been stronger than II.
These findings suggest that infants can not fully use information about right and wrong of their responses in order to find the correct value.
4. Error factor III was the strongest under RNw and the weakest under RN. There was no difference among 5 groups about the error factor III Only under RNw error factor III was stronger than III (see Fig. 4 and Table 8). In children there had been no difference between error factor III and III in all groups.
Therefore it seems that, as infants use only the surface of information about right and wrong of their responses, full information about them affects rather negatively on the performance of this learning in infants.

View full abstract