In previous studies, it was found that in Piaget's “three mountain tasks” many younger school children could define the position of objects in relation with other person's body at any points,-construct the reference system of the other person's body in reference to the position of objects, but they could not transform the relation of positions,-not reconstruct the reference system of the other persons body at one's own point.
This study aimed at investigating the difference of the transformation of relation of positions among the cognitive formation levels of space construction, where younger school children could define the position of objects relative to other person's body, but could not transform the relation of positions.
The Ss, who could not transform the relation of positions, were 60 school children (6:9-8:7). The Ss were divided into three groups, and trained in accordance with the method of experimental education.
Group C; trained for one day. The Ss defined the position of objects by front-back, rightleft relation to other person's body.
Group E2; trained for two days. After the same training as group C, the Ss could transform the relation of positions by concrete acts, relative to one's own body as measure.
Group E1; trained for five days. After the same training as of Group E2, the Ss could discover the transformational rule, and used it to transfer the relation of positions.
The results were: group E1 was better than group E2, group E2 was better than group C in three mountain tasks and-or similar tasks.
In conclusion,(1) it became clear that the important variable was as follows: to relate two reference systems-one reference system of the other persons body as a reference point to define the position of objects, and the other reference system of one's own body as a reference point to define the position of objects-, and to grasp the change of reference directions by concrete acts, and to reconstruct the reference system of the other porson's body as a reference point at one's own point. But these concrete acts had little effect on the acceleration of acquisition of transformation of positions.(2) After the concrete acts, using the transformational rule had much effect not only on the acceleration of acquisition of transformation of relation of positions but also on its retention in more complex tasks.

View full abstract

The purpose of the present experiment was to examine children's usage of the particles wa and ga in Japanese sentences.
Subjects were eighty children from 3:0 to 7:5 years old.
Two kinds of sentences-complete and incompletes entences were presented to all subjects by taperecorder as audio stimuli with supplementary visual (picture card) stimuli.
A complete sentence refered to a regular grammatical sentence, and an incomplete sentence lacking of wa and ga in a sentence in spite of its ordinary requirement in Japanese language.
Then, subjects were asked to repeat the complete sentence after each representation of stimuli.
Representation stimuli were composed of 10 complete sentences, 18 incomplete sentences, and 9 picture cards.
The results of the present study suggest:
(1) that appearance of ga in children's language behavior was antecedent to that of wa and correct usage of wa was possible only after preschool age.
(2) that above 6 year-old childen were capable of using wa, when the task sentence contained old information (Chafe, W. L., 1970), or description of a judgement or an idea in terms of personal feeling or emotion.
(3) that above 4 year-old childen were capable of using ga, when the sentence contained new information (Chafe, W. L., 1970), or description of a situation or a pheromenon.
(4) that the level of acquisition of particles wa and ga was summarized as follows: level-1) Children could not understand the meaning of the sentence at all. They gave no utterance, or gave irrelevant utterances, or else uttered only one word by picking it up from the given sentence. level-2) Children could use only ga, when a complete sentence was given as a task. They could not use wa properly at all. level-3) Children could use both ga and wa, when the task was a complete sentence. level-4) Children could use both ga and wa correctly regardless of this kind of given sentence-complete or incomplete.
(5) that “{S (N or NP)}+wa+(N or NP)+ga+Pred.” pattern in Japanese sentence formation was considered to be a natural pattern of utterance not only in adults'but also in children's language behavior, and that children knew the habitual usage of omitting (S+wa) part when the sentence transmitted old information.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the development of the understanding of the negative word “not” in a formal task. Regarding “class negation”, the Selection Task, the Construction Task and the Verbalization Task were given. To determine the stages of “negation” and “affirmation”, some instructions (sub-items) were combined. Also the effect of the antecedent experiences (color-form sorting or the selection with picture cards) on the tasks was investigated.
The subjects were 54 children in a day care. They were from 3; 8 to 6; 7, and were divided into three groups according to their ages. The Selection Task was to select the following ones from four figures (a blue circle, a blue triangle, a red circle and a red triangle). 1°blue 2°not a circle 3°ared triangle 4°not a blue circle 3 red and a circle 5°blue and not a circle 6°not a circle and not blue The Construction Task was to construct correspondents to the sub-items in the Selection Task (the words vary), using the apparatus separating the colors and the froms (cf. FIG. 1). The Verbalization Task was to utter the words corresponding to the instructions in the Selection Task, seeing one of the four figures pointed.
The results were as follows.
There was no effect of the antecedent experiences. Regarding “negation” (cf. FIG. 3), the Selection Task and the Construction Task were attained at about the same age. the stage of “one-dimensional negation” was attained at the age of about four years old, that of “two-dimensional negation” at about five and that of “partial complementary class” at about five (as in the Construction Task, at about six years old). On the contrary though, the Verbalization Task was difficult. The stage of “one-dimensional negation” was attained at about five years old and most of the six-year-old children remained at the stage. Regarding “affirmation” (cf. FIG. 4), in the Selection Task and the Construction Task,“twodimensional affirmation” was possible from the age of four. In the Verbalization Task,“one-dimensional affirmation” was possible from four, but the stage of “two-dimensional affirmation” was attained at only about the age of five or six years old. The stages of affirmation preceded those of negation by a year.
In addition to that, two conditions were compared using other subjects: when the apparatus of the Selection Task was four figures, and nine figures. The result was that there was no difference in: when difficulty. Also two conditions were compared the apparatus of the Selection Task was made of figures, and when made of picture cards (a butterfly, a tortoise, a rocket and a car. The dimensions were about “fly” and “living”). The result was that only the affirmation task with the picture cards was more difficult.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the development of perception of three-dimensional direction, that is, up-down, right-left andifront-back, by using the tasks of block-building. The following conditions were used. 1) F M: The standard stimulus was displayed in front of subject and after being instructed to remember the location of objects (two or three objects were included) in the stimulus, he had to reconstruct the same arrangement as the standard stimulus, or selecting the card identical with it. 2) iFP: The conditions were almost identical except that the subject's response was carried out under the standard stimulus. 3) RM: This condition was identical with the FM except that the standard stimulus was on the right side of the subject. 4) RP: The situation was almost the same as that of the FP except that the standard stimulus was shown on the right side of the subject.
The subjects were 72 kindergarten-children, age: 3, 4 and 5; 96 elementary school children, age: 6, 7, 8, and 9. They were divided into the above 4 groups of 6 children having the same age. Each was taken at random under the conditions of the experiments.
Results obtained were as follows;
1) The three principal dimensions of direction, namely, up-down, right-left and front-back, were differenciated. Then up and down, right and left, and front and back each dimension being discriminated respectively.
2) Children performed more accurately the tasks of up-down dimension than the other tasks. This tendency appeared more remarkably in the choice tasks than in the construction tasks.
3) As to the tasks of right-left dimension of direction, children under the RM and RP conditions made more mistakes than those under the FM and FP conditions. This tendency was not observed for the tasks of front-back dimension of direction.
4) Error responses to each dimension frequently occurred under FP and RP conditions. Children under FP conditions mistook “front” for “back”, and those under RP conditions “gright” for “left”. These phenomena were considered to be those of mirror script.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine three questions as follows: (i) how junior high school pupils perceive the causation of academic achievements,(ii) what relationships are observed among the perceived factors of causal attribution,(iii) whether it is possible to predict actual academic achievements and their self evaluation in terms of causal attribution.
The present investigation was carried out, taking account of four factors of causal attribution theoretically classified from locus of control and stability dimensions on the basis of Weiner's model. These were effort, ability, teacher and luck. A questionnaire, called Locus of Control in Academic Achievement Test, was made to assess the degree of the perceived relationships between causal factors and academic achievement and the level of self evaluation of academic achievements in eight school subjects from four different fields. This test was administered to 91 junior high school boys and 80 junior high school girls. The standard score of an achievement test was used as index of actual academic achievements.
The main findings were as follows:
1. Effort factor was dominant particularly in Mathematics, English and Japanese language. On the other hand, ability factor was relatively dominant in Music, Physical education and Arts. Luck factor Was not highly thought of in all school subjects.
2. Most of correlation coefficients between effort and ability factors, which were internal in the dimension of locus of control, were significant as expected. This is in accordance with Weiner's two dimensional models. However, effort factor was independent of luck factor. This is in conflict with Weiner's model, which tells that both effort and luck are the unstable factors on the stability dimension. There was a sex difference with regard to teacher factor: the factor positively related to it, was ability factor in boys, but effort factor in the case of girls.
3. It was not confirmed enough that the factors of causal attribution could predict actual academic achievements and their self evaluation, i. e. significant partial regression coefficients were not shown except in the effort factor by means of the multiple regression analysis. On the contrary, it would be better to say that these factors were probably effective to explain the direction of discrepancy between self evaluation and actual academic achievements, which in fact would mean easy or severe self evaluation. pupils who evaluate themselves severely tended to attribute the cause of academic achievements to effort factor. Conversely, pupils who evaluate themselves easily tended to take a serious view of ability, teacher and luck as causal attributions of academic achievements.

View full abstract

Three types of drill were proposed to test the effectiveness of individualization on drill practice. The division problems to be practiced in the experiment were sequenced according to difficulty level of problems (called problem's level) by predicted value estimated from equation 1. The subjects were divided into one of five ability levels by pretest. In a drill of branching type the drill broblems of the 1st day were matched in learner's ability level. During subsequent practice days problem's level assigned to him depended on his last result (FIG. 1). In a drill of mixedtype an ability level decided by pretest was appliedto learner throughout drill practice period. Half of the drill problems in this type were composed of problems which were coincident with learner's ability level. The remaining were formed from other problem's level (TABLE 2). In a fixed type learner was given the problems made from all problem's difficulty level (TABLE 3). After four drill practice days the posttest was performed.
The main results were as fallows:
1. In analysis of variance of TABLE 5, the difference of total score was unsignificant among three drill practice types. However, as can be seen in a significant drill practice tests interaction, there's obviously difference in gains from pretest to posttest: A fixed type is best with proportion correct of gains of 0.163 (number of correct answers, 4.88), a mixed type is next with 0.125 (number of correct answers, 3.64), and a branching type is lowest at 0.070 (number of correct answers, 2.10).
2. Proportion correct was higher as the learner's ability level increased and probleml's difficulty level decreased in all drill practice types (TABLE 6, 7, 8).
3. Gains from pretest to posttest depended on learner's ability level in both fixed and mixed type. Learner with higher ability obtained a little gains (ability 4 and 5). Learner with moderate ability showed the greatest gains (ability level 2 and 3). But learner of low ability reversely indicated the decrease especially in a fixed type from pretest to posttest. Such interaction was not found in a branching type.
These results were distinctly opposed to the prediction that practice effect was higher. as drill practice was individualized to learner's ability. Then, it was suggested that individualization of drill practice resulted in restricting learner's potentiality because of missing the opportunity to challenge harder problems.

View full abstract

The purpose of the present study uas to define operationally the concept of ego identity and to demonstrate that the discrepancy between the individual norm and the respective norms of a family, a society and a nation, gave rise to identity confusion. An identity confusion questionaire was made of 33 items regarded as the identity constructs based on the partsymptoms described by Erikson.
Eight self-concepts were measured by 12 pairs of adjectives from Nagashima et al.(1967) They were composed of “the real I & ”,“the I my family sees”,“the I the members of the university sees”,“the I the society see”,“the ideal I”,“the I my family wishes for”,“the I the members of the university wish. for”,“and the I the society wishes for”. The discrepancies between the I and family, university and society were used with regard to real and ideal “I” categories. They were also used as the indexes of the normative discrepancies.
The main results were as follows;
(1) The discrepancy between the individual norm and the familial norm made identity confusion.
(2) The discrepancy between the individual norm and the social norm made identity confusion.
(3) The discrepancy between the individual norm and the national norm made identity confusion.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract