The present study was concerned with the effects of pre-play experience on problem-solving activities in preschool children. Fifty-six five year old and 56 six year old children were randomly assigned to one control and three experimental groups. Manipulation being play group was allowed to play with a peer with the materials to be used in the task; manipulation on and non-play group was asked to imitate the E in manipulating materials to be used in the task; and play and non-manipulating group was given the opportunity to play with a peer with toys that were not related to the task. The extra experience lasted for 7 minutes.
During task session, all Ss were individually pre sented with the problem task whose solution called for joining several materials together to obtain a goal-object (a toy puppy) so placed that it could not be reached without a medium.
The main results suggested that experience of manipulating materials helped the construction of more complex tools for problem-solving and Ss consequently showed more rapid approach toward solution. While play-experience improved tool-construction during task process, Ss showed as a result a more gradual approach to the solution. Results also showedthat there were age differences in the effects of play-experience on problem-solving activities and in the types of play activities in the pre-task session.
These results were interpreted as showing that during pre-play session, Ss were training their intentional plans of activities. The age-differences observed were due to the children's different level of development in such activities.

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The first purpose of this paper was to reveal the decoding Processes of young children acquiring the reading of semantic units, through an experiment using similaritiebs etweenideographic scriptsa nd real things (Exp. I). The second purpose was to examine the discrimination process and the decoding process of young children by manipulating the number of letters and the meaning of Kana script (Exp. II). The third purpose was to make clear the role of these processes in the learning of Kanji reading (Exp. III).
In Exp. I the Ss were 32 kindergarten children. Each S was required to learn the reading of either four Kanji or four ideographic scripts at each trial. The learning was continued until one perfect criterion had been attained, or else for 10 trials. After these trials, each S immediately received four over leaning trials. The latency of correct reading was recorded.
The results obtained from Exp. I are shown in FIG. 1; (1) Ss under the ideographic condition learned more quickly than Ss under the Kanji condition,(2) there was, however, no difference of latency in any condition. Results indicated that the similari-ties between ideographic scripts and real things facilitated the decoding process: a script was visually decoded and, judging from the subject's discourse, after acquiring its reading, this decoding process was progressed only by repetition of the reading.
In Exp. II the Ss were 32 kindergarten children who had already acquired the reading of Kana scripts. The design of this Exp. was a 2x2 factorial one, in which a between factor was the length of the Kana sequence (2-or4-letters) and a within factor was the meaningfulness, meaninglessness of the Kana sequence. Each S was asked to read eight Kana sequences at one trial and to continue for another 8 trials. And then the latency of reading was recorded.
The results obtained from Exp. II are shown in FIG. 2; (3) 2-letter sequences were asked quickly read than those of 4-letter and meaningful sequences were faster read than meaningless ones.(4) Furthermore, a first order interaction between the degree of meaningfulness and the blocks of trials, and a second order interaction among three main factors were confirmed respectively. These results may be interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that meaningfulness facilitated the decoding processes, and this facilitation was more effective in the 4-letter condition than in the 2-letter.
In Exp. III the Ss were 32 kindergarten children who had not acquired the reading of Kanji scripts used in this Exp. The design of this Exp. was a 2x2 within factorial one, in which one factor was the meaningfulness of the Kanji (On-reading or Kunreading) and the other was the degree of the complexity of Kanji (complex or simple). Each S was asked to learn the reading of four Kanji scripts. The learning was continued until one perfect criterion had been attained, or else for 12 trials. The latency of all correct responses was recorded.
The results obtained from Exp. III are shown in FIG. 3; (5) Kun (Japanese-style reading: high meaningfulness) were more quickly learned and read than On (Chinese-style reading: low meaningfulness), simple scripts were more quickly learned and read than complex ones. Furthermore the latency of reading increased trial by trial. These results indicated that the discrimination and the decoding processes affected the reading processes, but also that these processes were independent of one another.

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This study was carried out in order to investigate the developmental trends of the relationship between the content structure of prose and the inferential abilities by using a multiple free recall paradigm. Forty fifth graders of an elementary school and thirty-five first graders of a junior high school learned seven sentences which originally formed a story under two conditions: with conjunctives (W condition) and without conjunctives (WO condition). In the W condition six conjunctive words were presented along with the seven sentences, while in the WO condition only two conjunctives were used. The seven sentences were presented five times to the subjects after each subject be notified randomly in each presentation. After each presentation a sentence memory test was given to the subjects. The subjects were required to recall the sentences in a free recall paradigm. After five presentations and five recalls a sentence order test was given to measure whether the subjects could arrange the seven sentences into a well-organized story. The inferential abilities of the subjects were measured by an inferential ability test developed by Ishida (1978, 1980).
The results were as follows: 1)(a) Forty-eight sub-jects arranged the sentences correctly; twenty-four in the W condition. and twenty-four in the WO condition.(b) In both conditions the higher graders tended to recall the sentences in such a way that order of the sentences would approximate to the target order trial to trial. Such tendency was not found for the lower graders.(c) An ordinal interaction between passage type and inferential ability was found for the lower graders. Those subjects with higher inferential ability tended to recall the sentences more approximately in the W condition than in the WO condition. This interaction was not found for the higher graders. 2) Data from twentyseven subjects who failed to arrange the seven sentences were analysed in same way as those from the above subjects who could arrange the sentences. This analysis showed that the results in the sentence order test corresponded with those in the inferential ability test and the sentence memory test. These results were discussed from the viewpoint of the information processing ability of subjects.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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