Eighty-eight 3-year-olds were presented with 1-2, 1-3, and 2-2 candy sets as to whether they understood the terms of“ more” and“ same”, and if they made wrong answers, they were given secondary instructions. At the end of the Pretest they were required to pass the criterion test.
Seventy-eight children who succeeded in the criterion test served as subjects. In Exp. I subjects were asked to discriminate between 3 and / or 4 item sets horizontally or vertically arranged on cards in one-to-one correspondence, while in Exp. II they were arranged non-correspondingly.
The major results are as follows:
1) In the pretest only 1/3 of the 3-year-olds readily understood “more” and “same”. The older group (3:6-3:11) more often passed the Pretest spontaneously or with less secondary instructions than the younger group (3:0-3:5). Ten children who failed in the criterion test were all found in the younger group. This indicates the necessity of giving a check-up test on the comprehension of the words “more” and “same” in advance, when 3-year-olds are to be used as subjects in experiments of quantitative judgment.
2) In the Pretest more errors occurred in equality than in inequality judgments.“Same” was shown to be more difficuclt than “more” as a quantitative term.
3) In spite of age differences in performance and of differences in difficulty between equality and inequality tasks, about 90% of the 3-year-olds succeeded during the Pretest in understanding the terms of “more” and “same”, which indicates the trainability of these terms for 3-year-olds.
4) In corresponding arrangements (Exp. I), almost all the subjects made perfectly correct responses to both equality and inequality problems.
5) On the other hand, the correct responses dropped down to 20% in non-corresponding arrangements (Exp. II). It is herewith suggested that 3year-olds judge quantity under the visual control even if they know the terms of “more” and “same”.
6) Most of those who were consistent in judgments used relative lengths of the rows as a cue, whereas nonconsistent responders who occupied more than a half of the subjects used a different visual cue from time to time.
7) Among non-corresponding tasks, inequality problems were performed better than equality ones where 4-4 problems were more poorly solved than 3-3 problems.
8) The age difference between the older and younger groups expanded according to the order of 4-4 equality, 3-3 equality and inequality problems, as the older group showed clearer progress in perfamances in the same order than the younger group. This may suggest that quantitative concepts in 3-year-olds develop from inequality toward equality judgment.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine how the assertive-aggresive behavior is maintained, increases and changes its response and victim in the interactions of nursery school children. It is predicted that the consequences of the assertive-aggresive behavior supplied by the peer group work as positive or negative reinforcers and condition the assertive-aggressive behavior. In order to confirm this prediction, the two following hypotheses are tested.
1. When an assertive behavior is followed by a positive reinforcer, on the next occasion in which the same aggressor is involved he would select the same aggressive response and the same victim. On the other hand when his behavior is follwed by a negative reinforcer, he would change either the aggressive response or the victimor both.
2. If a child who initially displayed few aggressive behaviors is frequently victimized and counterattacks successfully, his aggressive initiations would incerease.
The subjects were 4o children of three groups in two nursery schools. Their ages in each group were 1:6-2:5 (mean 1:10), 1:6-2:4 (1:11) and 2:8-3:5 (3:1). Their aggressive interactions were observed for 11 weeks. The aggressive responses were classified into 4 categories, the responses of victims into 7 categories and the responses of teachers into 4 categories. The responses of victims and teachers were labeled a priori as positive or negative reinforcers according to Patterson et al.(1967) and the pirot study.
A total of 2477 aggressive behaviors weve observed. Hypothesis I was confirmed by two groups, but not by one group aged 1:6-2:5. So the patterns of aggressive interaction of the three groups were analyzed. The result suggested that the amount of the peer interaction or the responsiveness to the stimuli supplied by the peer group would decide the conditionability of the aggressive behavior. As for the hypothesis 2, 11 children who had initially displayed few aggressive behaviors were followed up, and the results all satisfied the prediction.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of social deprivation-satiation operation on subject's awareness of response-reinforcement contingency.
Experiment I showed that a subject's awareness is an important factor in considering the effect of social reinforcement. Twenty-four preschool boys took part in a 10-minute social satiation session, in which they received the stimulus word,“orikousan lane”, either 2 (deprivation) or 16 (satiation) times. This was followed by a discrimination test of 75 trials, in which the same stimulus word was given to all correct responses. The test was administered by the experimenter in a preceeding session or by another individual unknown to the subjects. At the end of the test, they were asked about their awareness of response-reinforcement contingency. Ss in the other experimenter group showed more correct responses than in the same experimenter group, and Ss in the aware group more than in the unaware group. It was discussed that the differences in test performance reflect the difference in the experimenter's behavior in the two sessions, and that the efficacy of reinforcement relates to a subject's awareness of responsereinf orcement contingency.
Experiment II showed that the low effect of reinforcement in the same experimenter group is based on the experimenter's behavior in the preceeding session, and the subject's unawareness' Thirtysix preschool boys took part in a social satiation session, in which they had no interaction with the experimenter or received the stimulus word,“orikousandane”, either 2 (deprivation) or 16 (satiation) times. It was followed by a discrimination test, in which the same stimulus word was given to all correct responses. A half of subjects were given the information about the correct response in the test by the experimenter. The following was predicted on the basis of the finding of the experiment I; the mean scores in informaton group will be higher than in the no-information group, and those in the no-interaction group will be higher than in the group given the reinforcing stimulus in preceeding session. The results confirmed this prediction, and subjects in the information group belonged to the aware group more than in the no-information group, and the mean scores were higher in the aware group than in the unaware group. It was emphasized that the receiving of the information about correct response leads to increment of correct one, and that a subject's awareness of response-reinforcement contingency encourages discrimination learning.
These results were interpreted as indicating that it is necessary to consider the variables mediating social reinforcement effect with performance. Also dicussed was the necessity of examining the relation of the task in a discrimination test with response-reinforcement contingency.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate moral judgement in children and youth based on the theory and the method of Kohlberg, L., and to examine the availability of his method and the validity of stage sequences in Japan whose culture is different from the U. S. A..
In this study, moral judgement was analysed from how children and youth understood various moral norms which were imposed on them by adults or society, and what their standards of right-wrong were.
Four of the Kohlberg's stories involving moral dilemmas, translated and slightly modified, were given to 19 5 th-, 20 8 th-, 20 11 th-graders and 16 college students. They were asked to answer in writing what one of the characters of each story should do and why, and later, to respond in an interview to additional clarifying questions. Their responses were analysed in detail by issue scoring method which examined what their basic orientation to moral issues was, and classified into one of 5 stages,(stage 5 and 6 were not distinguished). Two scorers' rating 40 Ss independently were in close agreement.
The results were as follows;
1) Distributions of stages among the subjects were as shown in TABLE 5. It showed age-dependent development of moral judgement and supported the Kohlberg's theory.
2) As to sex differences, such tendency was found. that in girls there were more who had stage 3 orien tation (but not statistically sighificant).
3) In Japan there were more who belonged to stage 3 than in U. S. A., overall age except among college students.

View full abstract

There have been several problems in experimental studies about the mediational processes of discrimination shift learning. Two of these problems are that a non-reversal shift (NRS) learning was treated as a secondary event to be comparred with results in a reversal shift (RS) learning, and that the abilities required in the shifts were only indirectly measured by the amount of Subjects' (Ss') verbal knowledge about the relevant dimensions or values. We must devise an effective method to get more direct information about the abilities required in the shifts.
The present study was designed to solve the above-mentioned problems. Discrimination shift learning has been dealt with for a long time mainly from the point of view of behaviorism, but in this paper I would like to re-examine the verbalmediational hypothesis of Kendler, H. H. & Kendler, T. S.(1962), in terms of Piaget's views of the development of logical manipUlation by classification.
The tasks comparing the sizes of intradimensional value-classes (intra-d. task) and comparing the sizes of interdimensional value-classes (inter-d. task) were devised in order to measure the Ss' levels of logical manipulations prior to the first learning. All Ss (5 and 6 year-old) got correct answers in the intra-d. task, while they made various responses in the inter-d. task. So they were divided into two groups (higher group: H. G. and lower group: L. G.) by the scores of this inter-d. task. And the inter-d. task is analogous to Piaget's “class inclusion task”, hence H. G. are judged as children shifting into the concrete operational stage in which cognition by language gradually becomes dominant, on the other had, L. G. are judged as children remaining at the intuitive thinking stage in which cognition by perception is still dominant. Therefore, H. G. can be considered to correspond to the older children and L. G. to the younger ones or the children staying at a transitional period in the Kendlers' hypothesis.
Results were as follows:
(1) There was no difference between H. G. and L. G. in a RS learning.(2) H. G. obtained better results than L. G. in a NRS learnig.(3) H. G. attained a RS learning more easily than a NRS learning.(4) L. G. also learned a RS learning more easily than a NRS learning and the difference between the RS and NRS learning was greater in L. G. than in H. G.
The last result was quite contradictory to that deduced from the Kendlers' hypothesis, and it cannot be explained from their views. Here in this paper a new hypothesis is proposed whose construction is based on “the development of logical manipulation by classification”. In this hypothesis the term of “mediational learning” is used separately in each learning of RS and NRS.
What are suggested from this new hypothesis are as follows:
(1) Children who can make mediational responses in RS learning can't always make mediational ones in NRS, learning.(2) The verbal factor (or Piaget's logical operation) influences a NRS learning rather than a RS learning. Accordingly, it is at the time when a child shifts to the concrete operational stage where he can simultaneously consider the same stimuli from the two different dimensions, that he starts making mediational responses in NRS learning.(3) If an experimenter uses the familiar stimuli for Ss, they may be able to make mediational responses in RS learning, at a rather early period when cognitiOn by language is not yet dominant. Therefore, the existence of “non-verbal mediational events” may be expected.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract