The purpose of this study was to find the clue clarifying the acquistion process of the JOSHI (particles). This was done by analyzing the difficulty in the JOSHI GA and O acquired by comparing the kind of sentences using JOSHI.
The subjects were 80 normal children with a vocabulary age between 4:0 and 7:11.
In order to test the subjects' ability to use JOSHI, 33 incomplete sentences without JOSHI were presented to them using a taperecorder and picture cards. Then, they were asked to repeat while completing the sentence after listening to each incomplete sentence.
The results of this experiment might be summarized as follows:
1. The children with a vocabulary age between 7:0 and 7:11could use “GA” and “O” almost perfectly.
2. The ability to use “GA” was acquired earlier than the ability to use “O”.
3. The child not knowing the accurate meaning of “GA” and “O” had a trend to use “GA”.
4. The dificulty to use “GA” depended on
a) whether the sentence described the situation that could be described by other similar sentences or not.
b) what the kind of noun used as the subject in the sentence.
c) whether the intransitive verb requiring the use of “GA” had a corresponding transitive verb or not.
5. The difficulty to use “O” depending on whether the sentence would be a reversal or nonreversal sentence.

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The present study assumed two types of political attitudes for measuring political dispositions of adolescents, namely conservative and innovative attitudes. A questionnaire was performed to investigate first the age and sex differences (Research-I). Results of analyses revealed that (1) political attitudes for adolescents as a whole tended to be more innovative and less conservative, and (2) the innovative trend became stronger while the conservative trend would grow weaker along with the age progression. No systematic sex differences were observed.
The results of the Research-I, however, were found contradictory to those reported in similar studies: the survey by the NHK Public Opinion Research Institute (1978), which observed a certain political conservatism among youths. Then, in order to investigate reasons for the discrepancy between the two studies, the Research-II was conducted. Twelve university students (8 males and 4 females between age 18 and 19) were interviewed to help understand the broader aspects of students' political lives. The interview results indicated that (1) on politics, interviewees reported innovative thoughts, although,(2) as to their willingness to participate in actual political behaviors, subject students were found very passive, if not conservative.
Based on the above results, a hypothesis concerning the existence of two different dimensions of political attitudes was found: “political orientation”(conservative-innovative) and “political involvement” (active-passive). Then, Research-III was conducted through a questionnaire to develop scales for each dimension of political attitudes and to clarify related factors based on university students from 18 to 24 years of age. Subjects were divided into two groups in order to identify discriminating factors: the innovative-active (I-A) and the noninnovative-passive (NI-P) groups. Results of the analysis indicated that the factors related to these two political groups were (a) political concern,(b) belief in the impact of votings, demonstrations, and petitions,(c) favor for and interest in a political party, and (d) activities for social well-being. However, demographic factors were found to be of no significant relations to political attitudes.

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The purpose of the present study was to investigate on what experimental condition visual imagery ability could successfully predict the subject's performance in memory task. To attain this goal the imagery ability of individual subject was measured by the use of VVIQ, the following three factors were varied in associative memory task.
The first factor was the difficulty in associating stimulus term with response one. It was controled by varying the number of response terms, one (in Exp. 1) or two (in Exp. 2).
The second was the kind of memory task such as short or long term recall. The former was an immediate recall of response items, while the other was an unexpected free recall in which the subjects were asked to recall both stimulus and response items 30 minutes later after short term recall.
The third was the image-arousing p otential of material. That potential was defined as the integrated imagery value (high or low) which was the vividness of imagery constructed of pair (in Exp. 1) or triplet (in Exp. 2) of words.
Prior to two experiments 30 undergraduate sudents completed the VVIQ, and were divided into two homogeneous groups of 15 subjects on the basis of their VVIQ scores. The one group took part in Exp. 1, and the other in Exp. 2. The subjects in Exp. 1 and 2 were together instructed to relate the stimulus term with the response one and construct the integrated imagery.
The subjects had no prior experience of imagery experiment, and their VVIQ scores were unknown to the experimenter to exclude the influence of demand characteristics.
After each experiment the 7 lowest and the 7 highest scores of VVIQ were selected as “good” and “poor” imagers respectively. The basic data were the number of total words recalled by each subject. In each experiment a 2×2×2 (imagery ability, integrated imagery value, and trial) and a 2×2 (imagery ability and integrated imagery value) analysis of variance were applied to short and long term recall data respectively. The integrated imagery value and the trial were repeated measures.
Main results and conclusion were as fol lows:
a) The high imagery material (H set) was superior in the number of recalled words to the low imagery material (L set) on both short and long term recall in Exp. 1 and 2.
b) The short term recall was improved on thesecond trial over the first trial in both Exp. 1 and 2 (FIG. 1 and 3).
c) The imagery ability x integrated imagery value interaction was significant on long term recall in Exp. 2, indicating that H set was remembered better than L set in poor imagers and the difference between H and L sets was not found in good imagers (FIG. 4). This result suggested that good imagers could be successful in equally transferring H and L sets to long term store (LTS) by sufficient imaginal coding, and poor imagers failed in transferring L set to LTS in contrast to H set.
On short term recall in Exp. 2, the same interaction was found at the second trial (FIG. 3). In the secondtrial most of recalled words were probably retrieved from LTS, because the materials to be learned were identical with those of the first trial. Consequently the interaction may be interpreted as caused by the same mechanism in long term recall.
From the above results, it is implied that the imagery ability might be successful in predicting the subject's performance in recall of L set constructed of triplets of words from LTS. That implication supported the following result.
d) There was a positive significant correlation between the subject's imagery ability and the number of words recalled from L set on long term recall in Exp. 2 (FIG. 5).

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The aim of this study is to propose some task and method which can clarify the psychological process of children's text production.
Children (2nd, 4th and 6th graders) were given a stimulus sentence and were asked to make a story, writing one sentence after the stimulus sentence. Each child made six stories. Then 672 short texts were analysed in terms of (1-1) number of letters,(1-2) number of pausal units,(1-3) number of propositions (the first three are indices of textual quantity),(2-1) coherence forms,(2-2) number of new arguments (indices of texual coherence),(3- 1) conceptual framework of children's sentences,(3-2) temporal relation of stimulus-children's sentence,(3-3) junctive relations of the two sentences (the last three are indices of semantic analysis). In evaluating the coherence forms and three semantic relations, texts were assorted into some categories and the frequencies were counted.
Main results are
(1) Sentences written by children increase in the three indices of textual quantity as grades.
(2) As for the coherence forms, 2nd graders use ellipsis most frequently, but 4th and 6th graders use noun repetition.
(3) The number of new arguments increase as grade and children's texts become more progressing.
(4) The most frequent conceptual framework is action in all grades. But the dominance of action frame diminishes with development.
From these results, it was suggested that planning of texts was likely to rely upon an action sequence in all the grades. And realization of the planning differs in choice of coherence forms. The youngers choose the more cognitively efforless form, e. g. ellipsis.

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Recursion is one of the remarkable structures of our logical thinking.
This study aimed at testing the hypothesis that the recursive information processing capacity is one of the factors which are critical to the performance of the reasoning with recursive structure.
It is well-known that the self-embedded sentences are more difficult to recall than the branching sentences. And for children, it is often difficult to describe the verbal description of recursive thinking. The degree of recursiveness decides on the difficulty.
Two experiments were carried out to test the hypothesis. The subjects were first graders at junior high schools. In both of the two experiments, two logical paradoxes with recursive structures were used as reasoning tasks. Two measures of the recursive information processing capacity were used; Ist experiment: the performances of the recalling tasks with self-embedded and branching sentences; and 2nd experiment: the scores of the verbal descriptions of the pictures which show recursive thinking.
In the Ist experiment, high positive correlation was observed between the understanding of the paradoxes and the performances of the recalling tasks with self-embedded sentences.
In the 2nd experiment, those who understood the paradoxes marked higher points in the verbal descriptions of recursive thinking than those who did not understand them.
The recursive information processing capacity might be one of the critical factors of the performance of the reasoning having a recursive structure.

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The purpose of the present study was to test the predictions derived from Semantic Feature Hypothesis concerning the acquisition of spatial adjective pairs and to discuss the formational processes of semantic space.
The subjects were 30 children attending a nursery school in Sendai. According to their ages, they were divided into three groups of 10 each. The mean age for each group was 4; 0, 5; 1, 6; 1, respectively.
Two experiments were conducted. In experiment 1, the Ss were presented with 10 spatial adjectives and asked to give their opposites. The 10 adjectives used were big/small, long/short, tall/short, thick/ thin, and wide/narrow. In experiment 2, the Ss were shown a set of four wooden blocks and asked to choose the-one, where the blank was filled with one of the following 6 words: longest/shortest, tallest/shortest, thickest/thinnest.
The main results were as follows.
(1) The children were aware that a word belonged to a particular semantic space before they had learned the full meaning of the word.
(2) “Big/small dimension” was acquired prior to other dimensions. When the children did not know well more restricted adjectives, they tended to substitute “big/small” for them.
(3) Unmarked words were acquired no later than marked words.
(4) The children of 4 years old tended to regard marked words as complementary sets of unmarked words and the children of 5 years old tended to regard them as being below the average in the relevant dimensions.

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In the present study I examined the planned organization of discourse in children's reporting situations. The observational setting was programmed along the curriculums in a nursery school, where each child reported to the other classmates and the teachers what he had done the previous day. Over 7 months, 123 cases from 3 to 6 year-oldchildren were observed and recorded.
It was assumed in the model that the planning in the report had three sub-steps...first, a child had to choose a topic as a theme of discourse; second, he had to choose some events under such topic, and third, he had to add some details. The model also assumed the existence of not only the events verbally described, but also the topics being psychological units for the child.
Purposes of the study were (1) to analyze the discourse structure and to make its developmental changes clear,(2) to show the existence of editing process in the level of discourse, and (3) to consider the role of the teacher's help.
Main findings were as follows. First, through the event-based analysis (TABLE 4) the developmental changes in the discourse structure could not be made clear (TABLE 5-A, B). The hierarchical organization, which included both events and topics, produced clear developmental trends (TABLE 6, 7, FIG. 3).
Second, the “link-unit” in hesitation phenomenon reflected the editing, not on the level of words or syntax, but on the level of discourse (TABLE 8, FIG. 4). From both the analysis of the discourse structure and the editing process, it was suggested that the development of the planned organization was a necessary part in the development of spoken language.
Third, the help of a teacher took an important role in the transition from the simple structure to the structure directed by the “space” relation (TABLE 9). When the child reported without teacher's help, the hesitation phenomena occurred more frequently (TABLE 10-A, B). In this situation children might internalize the teacher's help and learn how to plan the discourse. This suggested the working of the zone of proximal development by L. S. Vygotsuky.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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