How well can children and adults understand complicated sentences? How do their structure and mode of presentation influence our understanding? To answer these questions, six sentences, two (differing in length) representing each of three different kinds of sentence structure, umekomi (chained active), ukemi (chained passive), and heiretsu (binary active) were prepared and each was given orally to a group of some 20 Ss. Elementary school pupils, students of junior high and high schools, and some university undergraduates served as Ss. Ss were asked to recognize the relationship among the names appearing in the stimulus sentence.
The results show that the complicated sentences used in this series of experiments, especially auditory ones, were too difficult for even university students to cope with. Heiretsu was the easiest of the three. Most Ss could not parse properly the more complicated sentences of umekomi and ukemi, and tended rather to regard them as sets of grammatically incomplete simple sentences. This tendency could be traced through all age-levels of Ss, and there were no qualitative differences among the processing strategies Ss had adopted. Visually presented, however, the stimulus sentences were understood fairly well by elementary school pupils.
The strategies for processing aurally presented sentences seem to depend heavily on the inflected form of the first “auxiliary verb”, the function of which was grasped somewhat ungrammatically by most of the Ss.

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“Jan-Ken” has the property of random partial reinforcement. The purpose of the present experiment was to examine the property that “Jan-Ken” facilitates and maintains the occurrence of “Jan-Ken” behaviors and “Jan-Ken” imitation. Another purpose was to examine how the effect of vicarious reinforcement was influenced by the effect of direct reinforcement.
The films that female adult and child (boy or girl) do “Jan-Ken” and the victor eats biscuits were used as modeling stimuli. In alternative condition, female adult and child model each eats three biscuits according to outcomes of “Jan-Ken”. In child-victor condition, child model eats all biscuits.
The subjects were 15 boys and 15 girls. They ranged in age from 5 years 6 months to 6 years 6 months. The experiment runs as follows; the exposure to the film-the measure of spontaneous performance-(one or two days after) the second exposure to the same film-the second measure of spontaneous performance-(after the 10th) the third measure of spontaneous performance. In the measure of performance, subjects were paired with and played with only one toy. Then, Ss ate biscuits given in consideration fo participation. Ss' behaviors were observed by the experimenter from the observation room.
The question asked after the first spontaneous performance demonstrate that many Ss of both conditions reported the models' “Jan-Ken” behavior and more than half the Ss of child-victor condition reported child having eaten all biscuits. Two modeling conditions had different effects on boys and girls. More girls in the alternative condition imitated distictly models' “Jan-Ken” behavior than Ss of the child-victor condition. More boys tended to have done “Jan-Ken” at the last biscuit and the number of boys of both conditions who performed “Jan-Ken” did not differ significantly. Such disposition of the boys lost meaning in conmparing the two conditions. Some losers at the “Jan-Ken” tended to have desired not to do subsequent Jan

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It is expected that the motor response requiring both speed and accuracy is affected by the redundancy of stimulus events. This study was planned to examine the effects of redundancy in successive stimulus series (S) upon motor responses (R) with high S-R compatibility.
In Experiment I, subjects used were children. of four different ages (7, 9, 11, 13 years old) and college students, with N of 5 each. The subject was requnired to perform key-pressing responses under six different stimulus series (or conditions), with high redundancy (about 70%) in varying orders (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th or 0 order). In each condition was given 300 trials with an inter-time interval of 5 sec. and reaction time (RT) and number of error was observed.
The main results were:
1. Improvement in log RT was found under the 1st and 2nd order conditions in all age groups. Improvement in log RT was shown under the 3rd order condition only for the 3 older groups and that under the 4th and 5th order conditions only for the college groups. However, log RT in later stages of training in younger subjects was related only with the 2nd order redundancy, and that in older subjects only with the 2nd and the 3rd order redundancy, higher for the 2nd than for the 3rd order. This finding indicates that improvements in higher order redundancy conditions must be attributed to the effects of lower order redundancy components.
2. The effects of the 3rd order redundancy in younger subjects did not appear and that in older subjects appeared only after 200 trials. It shows that use of a good number of trials are needed for the higher order redundancies to be effective, and there are age differences in using redundancy.
3. Linear relationships were found between errors and the 2nd order redundancy only in 11 years old.
The purpose of Experiment II was to explore the possibility that the 3rd order redundancy can be efficiently used. Subjects used were 6 graduate students and the subjects performed the task under six different conditions (2000 trials each): (1) the 2nd order redundancy of 68%,(2) the 2nd order redundancy of 30%,(3) the 3rd order redundancy of 73 % (4) the 3rd order redundancy of 80%,(5) the 3rd order redundancy of 39%,(6) zero order. Otherwise the procedure was identical to that in Experiment I.
The main results were:
1. Linear regressions were found between log RT and the 2nd and 3rd order redundancy with similar coefficients of determination, but with a slightly steeper slope for the 2nd order redundancy. Improvement in log RT under 3rd order high redundant conditions could not produce improvement under 2nd order high redundant condition. These events hint that the effects of the 2nd order redundancy are stronger than that of 3rd order redundancy.
2. Log RT of 3rd order high redundant conditions deviated in faster side of the regression line to the 2nd order redundancy, and in slower side of the regression line to the 3rd order. Log RT of the 2nd and 3rd order low redundant conditions deviated in slower side of both the regression lines. These facts suggest that the 2nd order components were used efficiently in the 3rd order high redundant conditions, but the 3rd order components were not used efficiently, and that any order components were not used efficiently in conditions contained low redundancy in any order.

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Piaget, J. et al.(1960) suggested that the number of segments (elements) of two lines might influence the judgement of their lengths at a certain level, although its role was equivocal. And then they said that the youngest subjects lacked the concept of number so that their judgements of length were not influenced by the number of segments.
The present study was aimed at investigating. their suggestions systematically, including development of number, with a hundred children from three to eight years old.
The children were given the six tasks individually.
1) Counting objects.
2) Taking out the given number of an aggregate.
3) Comparison of two number words.
4) Conservation of number.
5) Comparison of length-A (Conservation of length, arranging matches at right angles to one another and in a series of zigzags.)
6) Comparison of length-B (using two straight strips of paper, each having different number of segments.)
The findings and suggestions which were gained in this experiment were as follows:
1) The older children (six-seven years old) responded to the conservation task of number and the comparison task of length-A (conservation task of length) more correctly than the younger. On the other hand, the children of these ages responded to the comparison task of length-B less correctly than the younger. These results mean, if the children assure conservation of number, their judgements of length are influenced by the number of segments. And they also mean that the positive influence appears when two lines with the same size of segments are compared and the negative influence appears when two lines with the different size of segments are compared.
2) when these findins are compared with the findings by Gal'perin, P. Ya. et al.(1960) concerning conservation of volume, we can find these number influences on judgement of not only length but continous quantity in general.
3) The author suggests that the negative influence phenomenon arises from the concepts of number which children develop on the base of discontinous quantity and therefore in order to extinguish this phenomenon, children should develop the concepts of number on the base of continous quantity.

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