The purpose of Exp. 1 was to investigate the relationship between cognitive development and language development. Piaget's number and liquid conservation tests were used in order to decide the cognitive developmental stage. The comprehension, production and transformation tests of active and passive sentences were used to examine the linguistic capacities. Subjects consisted of 150 children (Boys 81, Girls 69), aged from 5 years 2 months to 6 years 2 months with a mean of 5 years 8.9 months.
The results were as follows; 1) According to the performance of number and liquid conservation tasks, children were classified in three developmental stages; conservation stage (Cgroup), intermediate stage (I group), and nonconservation stage (NC group). There was no difference in the mean age among three groups. The analysis based on the conservation tests showed that the children in C group obtained high score in three language tests and the children in NC group obtained low score. 2) We classified children with the performance of three language tests to three groups; high score group, intermediate group and low score group. We found that the children who obtained high score in language tests showed the tendency to be conserver and the children obtained low score showed the tendency to be nonconserver. It was suggested that there was a close relationship between cognitive development and language development.
The purpose of Exp. 2 was to find how the cognitive development and the language development influence each other. We introduced the training experiment to attain the present purpose. Subjects were children who were nonconserver and who obtained low score in transformation test. Ss were assigned to two experimental groups (operational training group, OT and language training group, LT) and control group. Each group consisted of 15 children. In OT group, children were trained in number conservation tasks mainly by verbal rule instruction of conservation principles (identity, reversibility and compensation). In LT group, children were trained in the transformation tasks by verbal rule instruction of active and passive voice transformation. The experiment consisted of pretest, training session, post test 1 and posttest 2. The results were as follows; 1) In OT group, children progressed significantly from pretest to post test 1 and post test 2 in number conservation test. However, they did not progress in language tests. 2) In LT group, children did not so much progress in language tests. They did not show the progress in number conservation test. Sinclair showed that the training of language usage was not effective for the cognitive development. She concluded that language was structured by intellectual operations. The results obtained by the training experiment suggested that her conclusion was questionable.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyze what kind of advanced information was important for young children's story comprehension. As materials, we used a story of an elephant titled “Gurumpa's Kindergarten”: This story consisted of 7 episodes 5 of which contained repeated and cumulative structure. In relation to the material, we manipulated the content and presentation of advanced information: single and cumulative pictorial information for the former and random and ordered for the latter.
The subjects were 76 kindergarten children aged from 5-10 to 6-10 with mean CA of 6-4. They were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: ordered -cumulative, random-cumulative, ordered-single and random-single. The experiment consisted of four parts: (a) a frame-formation session in which Ss were given 7 drawings as advanced information,(b) story telling session,(c) an immediate test session containing free recall comprehension test and reconstruction test,(d) a delay test (3 days later) employing only reconstruction test.
Main results were as follows.
(1) The group with ordered-cumulative information showed significantly better performance on the immediate reconstruction test than another three groups. However, there were no significant difference among all groups on the delay test, because three groups improved their performance.(See FIG. 2)
(2) The hypothesis that the ordered presentation should facilitate the performance of reconstruction test was not proved as a whole. The order of presentation, however, had different effect on the comprehension of each episode of the story.(See FIG. 4)
(3) The comprehension scores of primacy and recency episodes were higher than that of intermediate episodes.
These results were interpreted as advanced information with ordered-cumulative pictures playing effective roles as a framework for understanding the story but its effect decayed on the delay test, because the subject might process the story through his cognitive “story schema”.

View full abstract

This study attempted, first, to analyse the developmental change in a drawing of a human figure in running style, and second, to examine the hypothesis that body image was a more dominant factor of the drawing performance than the ability of visual- motor cooperation and of perceptual discrimination.
Drawings of 384 children ranging from Kindergarten aged 6 to the 6th grade of elementary school aged 12 were analysed in various points such as face, shoulders, arms, knees, and three dimensional expression of legs. Stereotyped expressions changed to realistic styles as follows: from full face to side face in 7-8 years of age (FIG. 1), stretched arms and knees to bent ones in 7-8 (FIG. 4, 5), two dimensional shoulders to three dimensional ones in 8-9 (FIG. 2), legs from two dimensional expressions to three dimensional in 11-12 years of age (FIG. 9). Thus there was a kind of ‘time-lag’ (decalage) on the development of drawing with realistic style. Children showed realistic expressions first in 7 years of age and master them completely at 12.
In order to trace the development of the body image during early elementary school years, 205 subjects were tested after drawing. A child's body image questionaire made of 14 questions was given to 70 first grade (7: 2), 67 second grade (8: 2), and 68 third grade (9: 1) public school children. EXAMPLE: “When you start to roll over on a mat, which part of your body touches the mat first?” More than half of 1st grade children aged 7 answered head' to this question, while nearly 90%' of 3 rd grade children aged 9 answered ‘hand’ correctly. The body image thus improved with age. Responses to the questionaire were compared with children's drawings and meaningful relations were found.
The spiral maze test of Gibson (1977) and perceptual discrimination test, were given to 38 second grade and 34 third grade children 8-9 years of age. No meaningful relations between performances of these tests and children's drawings were found, except for a slight relation between the expressions of bent knees and high performance in the spiral maze test.
Discussions were made on the following problems: the relation between the development of the body image and realistic expressions on drawing, and child's conception of space and drawings.

View full abstract

The present study aimed at making the measurement scale of headmaster's leadership behavior in the elementary school and to examine its validity.
The subjects were 463 teachers in Fukuoka City and the headmasters rated by their teachers numbered 21.
We also measured such variables as the solidarity among the teaching staffs, the staffs' will to work, the staff meeting-evaluation etc., which were characterized as external criterion variables of headmaster's leadership behavior.
The items of headmaster's leadership scale were selected by the result of factor analysis.
The headmaster's leadership types were determined depending on the P-M leadership theory.
The main results were as follows:
(1) By factor analysis of leadership items, two factors were found:“Factor of group maintenance” and “Factor of group goal performance.” Factor of group maintenance was considered to correspond to M-behavior (group maintenance-oriented leadership behavior) and factor of group goal performance was considered to correspond to P-behavior (group goal performance-oriented leadership behavior) in P-M leadership theory.
(2) By factor analysis of external criterion variable items, eight factors were found:“Factor of the solidarity among the teaching staffs,”“Factor of the staffs' will to work,”“Factor of the satisfaction with salary,”“Factor of the mental stress to work,”“Factor of the staff training-evaluation,”“Factor of the staff meeting-evaluation,”“Factor of the staffs' will to study teaching,”and “Factor of the staffs' identity with the school.”
(3) Headmaster's leadership was divided into four types, PM type, P type, M type and pm type, respectively, depending on the intensity of the two dimensions P and M.
(4) The relationship of four leadership types with eight external criterion variables was examined. Result: in the external criterion variables except two variables, the staffs' will to work, and mental stress to work, the PM-type obtained higher scores than the other types. It was statistically significant.

View full abstract

The purpose of the present study is to clarify the transitional period in which speech function has a developmental change in early childhood. In order to this achieve, O'Connor-Helmelin (1959) type's discrimination and reversal task was used. Effects of verbalization were examined as a function of age. The subjects were 104 nursery and elementary school children: 26 Ss at the ages of 3, 4, 5, and 7.
All the children were divided into two groups, each of which was treated differently. In the first treatment (verbalization group), the Ss were asked the reason for making the decision whenever they had given correct selections in the discrimination task. In the other treatment (no-verbalization group) the Ss were not asked any. The identical re. versal task was given under the same procedure to the two groups. Then the two groups were compaired with their performances in discrimination and reversal learning.
The main results may be summarized as follows:
(1) For all children of the different age levels, verbalization had positive effects on discrimination learning. The verbalization had fascilitating effects on their performances especially for the younger subjects. Further, as far as discrimination learning is concerned, there was not any significant difference between age groups. This seems to indicate that verbalization procedure cancelled out the difference between age groups.
(2) In terms of the effects of verbalization on reversal learning, the younger subjects were different from the older ones. In other words, the verbalization procedure increased the difference between age groups. For the younger children verbalization had negative effects and, on the other hand, Positive effects for the older children.
These results are interpreted as indicating that speech function has a developmental change around four years of age. We may postulate two stages in the development of speech function. In the first stage, speech (verbalization in the experiment) plays the role as a classifier. In the second, it has double role: a classifier as well as a mediator.

View full abstract

The purpose of the present study was to analyse the influence of a father's occupation on occupational choice from the standpoint of a son's inheritance of his father's occupation.
An investigation was carried out with the aid of a questionaire made of 15 questions on 30 different items for 5, 666 boys and girls of junior high schools and senior high schools in three prefectures in Japan. The questionaire contained parents' occupations, the occupations expected of their offspring by parents and their reasons for the expected occupations, the future occupational choice by offspring and their reasons for the occupational choice, and so on.
In this paper, 1, 447 junior and 1, 537 senior high school boys composed the analysed subjects. The main results were as follows.
1) Compared with the ratios of the son entering into the competent occupation other than the father's, those entering into the same specific occupation of their father were significantly high in almost all occupations. This meant that there existed a latent occupational inheritance.
Especially high ratios of the son's wish of inheriting were found for sons of professionals, technical workers and public service personnel.
2) Compared with the ratios of parents' expectations of their son choosing the competent occupation other than the father's, those of their son choosing thefather's same specific occupation were significantly high in all occupations.
Especially high ratios of parents' expectations of inheriting were found in occupations such as doctor, teacher, storekeeper, civil and building engineer, public service personnel, and a small factory owner in town.
3) The birth-order has no effect on the son's wish of inheriting. But it was found that parents tended to place their expectations of inheriting on the eldest son.
Concerning the development, it was anticipated that father's influence would be more potent in the younger age than in the older. The results fell short of the anticipation.
4) If we compare the ratios of the son's wish of inheriting in the son who shoulders both his parents' expectations, in the son who does either of them and in the son who does neither of them, those of the son who does both parents' expectations were significantly the highest of the three.
Therefore it was admitted that parents' expectations mediated the relationship between father's occupation and his son's occupational choice, namely, the occupational inheritance-making process.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract