Three autistic students were taught to emit a mand for instruction to unknown stimuli, asking for a correct answer from an adult ; the effects of such training were evaluated with multiple baseline analyses. In Experiment 1, the students were taught to respond “I don't know” to unknown Chinese characters, drawings or verbal questions. The results indicated that for everyone of the three students the acquired verbal response was generalized within the same stimulus set, but wasn't generalized beyond stimulus sets. In Experiment 2, students were instructed correct answers upon their response “I don't know. Let me know” to unknown stimuli. First, primary reinforcements were presented both for manding and correct answering (Condition 1). And then, reinforcements were presented only for correct answering (Condition 2). As a result, two out of three students did acquire correct answers but only when Condition 2 was implemented. Subsequently, all students also emitted appropriate verbal response in a situation involving textual tasks, dictation tasks and free play settings (Experiment 3). These results were discussed in terms of techniques in order to establish a generalized and functional language.

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Concerning the development of the ability of transformational representation, two experiments were done with Piaget's “Three Mountains Problem”. The first experiment aimed at clarifying the developmental relationship between the “Three Mountains Problem” and its subordinate abilities. 99 children 4-9 years of age were tested for their abilities in a longitudinal method. With the “Three Mountains Problem” as a dependent variable and three subordinate abilities as independent variables, the other experiment aimed at making clearer the relationship found in the first one. 16 children 4-7 years of age were trained on some subordinate abilities and were tested for their change in the ability on the “Three Mountains Problem”. The result of these two experiments proved that the development of the ability of transformational representation was due to the acquisition of some subordinate abilities.

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This study was attempted to clarify the process of the formation of ego-ideal in adolescence. A questionnaire inquiring into real- and ideal-self images, peer image, self esteem, and self-acceptance was conducted on 158 male subjects of three age groups: junior and senior high school, and college students. Results were as follows: 1) there were no significant age differences in the correlation between ‘real self’ - ‘ideal self’ discrepancy and self-acceptance, and in the correlation between self esteem and self-acceptance ; 2) correlation between ‘real self’ - ‘ideal self’ discrepancy and self esteem was higher in college students than in other two younger groups ; 3) whereas significantly high correlation was found between ideal self and peer image in junior high school students, and between real self and ideal self in the older groups. It was thus concluded that, in early adolescence, the peer image one holds is introjected into one's ideal self image so that one's ego-ideal is consolidated then enabling one to have self esteem based on ‘real self’ - ‘ideal self’ discrepancy in late adolescence.

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The purpose of the present study was to investigate the developmental progress on the mathematical understandings of speed and acceleration in children by administering problems related to them. The subjects were at the elementary level: 341, 4 to 6 graders and 364, 1 to 3 secondaryschool-students. Three kinds of problems on both speed and acceleration were administered: i. e., Which one is faster between two objects? Which one can go farther? And, which one takes more time? The results showed that in general the children could answer more correctly to questions related to distance. That is, in the questions on speed, they could understand better than any others the relations between speed and distance, and also in the questions on acceleration, the relations between acceleration and distance. Developmental progress in the correct responses by grades was also found. Fourth and fifth grade children's understanding on the function of speed or acceleration was found to be worse than in any other grades. Children above sixth grade could answer more correctly in every kind of the given problems.

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The purpose of this study was to examine the process of preschoolers' detection of inconsistency. In the first experiment, what kind of text structure produced a good effect on performance to detect inconsistency, was examined. The results showed that the text structure easy to apply the contextual expectation produced high performance. It was suggested that difficulty to use the contextual expectation on text had some effect on performance to detect inconsistency. In the second experiment, the effect of awareness of contextual expectation was examined. The results showed that Expectation-Groups produced better performance and clearer explanation than Non-Expectation-Groups. It was suggested that awareness of contextual expectation improved the performance of detection of inconsistency. From these results, the hypothesis might be that during information processing, it was monitored whether information matches the contextual expectation or not.

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The purpose of this study was to testify the effect of practice by repetition on solving processes of three-term series problems. The task was to decide whether three terms in the two premises were constructed into linear order or not, and reaction times were measured. Graduate and undergraduate students participated twice in this experiment, and the second session was regarded as “repeated”. Reaction time was supposed to be the sum of times spent in components, which were the units of processing, and it was investigated which components the repetition would have an effect on. As a result, linguistic strategy in surface structure was shifted into a strategy requiring little memory load ; and that in deep structure wasn't shifted. Interstrategic shift between linguistic and spatial was little observed after repetition. It was suggested that linguistic or spatial processing of a subject was considered comparatively stable.

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The present article focuses on the conce pt of achievement motive which currently presents certain difficulties to investigators due to a lack of consensus on its meaning. Two investigations were undertaken with 447 undergraduate students (237 male, 210 female): (1) to develop a scale for measuring achievement motive in terms of Social Need Achievement (SA) and Personal Need Achievement (PA) and (2) to clarify the relationships between personal traits related to achievement motive. Results indicated that: (1) Challenge Success Need (CSN) should be incorporated into the co ncept of achievement motive: (2) SA has little relation to personal traits while PA is related to self-actualization, and CSN being possibly related to toughness and vitality ; and (3) there are differences between males and females concerning achievement motive. The results, in general, proved the need for a multi-faced definition of achievement motive.

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The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship of psychological and physiological factors together with factors related to Kanji learning to reading and writing abilities of kanji in low vision children. Subjects were 281 low vision children in grades 2 to 6. Reading and writing tests were composed of 100 Kanji characters. Answers were divided into three categories: correct, wrong and no answer. The re sults of analyzing contributory factors to reading and writing abilities of Kanji in low vision were as follows: 1. Significant differences in the 17 of profile items between good learners of Kanji and poor learners were found; 2. Forty-seven of profile items were analyzed by Factor Analysis, and 10 factors were extracted ; 3. Fourteen factors (such 10 factors, grade, visual acuity, visual field and school where subjects belonged) were evaluated by Multiple Regression Analysis. Six factors contributed significantly to reading ability. Writing ability of Kanji was significantly contributed by 7 factors.

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The development of young children's mobility and two functions of the use of landmarks, i.e. 1) the setting up of the sequential comprehension of space (positive effect of landmarks) and 2) the disturbance of the comprehensive understanding of space (negative effect of landmarks), were investigated. Twenty 2: 9 and 3: 10 years old children experienced a route made of three large boxes, then they were required to reverse and to detour the route. It was considered that the sequential comprehension was necessary for solving the reversal task, and the comprehensive understanding was necessary for solving the detour task. Half of the subjects passed the route with remarkable landmarks. Six 1: 11 years old children were also added in this experiment. The results showed that landmarks improved subject's performance in the reversal task and had no effect on the detour task ; performances in both tasks were developed. Analysis for the course walked by subjects showed negative effect of landmarks. Development of young children's spatial ability and the cause of its negative effects were discussed.

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The present study was proposed to discu s s the developmental change of verbal representation of action imagery. Thirty 5-year-old, 30 six-year-old, 30 eight-year-old children and 30 college students took part in this study. Each subject was presented nine Sarbin's stick figures, and were asked to represent what a stick figure had in hands and what actions such figure had to do with things. According to Overton & Jackson (1973), the action imagery responses evoked by stick figures were classified into 3 types (ED/SD type, and Others) in terms of direction of the imagined actions. The main findings were as follows ; 1) College students represented more significantly in total number of imagery responses and the imagined actions than 5- and 6-year-old groups 2) SD responses decreased with increase of age and more expressed by type I figures than other types, 3) The younger age group showed less ED type responses by type I/III figures, 4) Generally, ED type responses were more expressed by type III figures. These findings were discussed from the viewpoints of Werner & Kaplan's distancing hypothesis.

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In study I, Locus of Control Scale developed by Kambara et al.(1982) was administered to 4310 junior high school students, 1416 senior high school students and 1837 college students. By regression analysis, it was found that older students had more external scores than did younger students. In detail, perceived effectiveness of effort showed a relatively great decrease. On the other hand perceived self-determination did not show significance decrease with age. In study II, additional questionnaires concerning attitudes and behaviors in school were administerd to both junior and senior high school students. Older students reported more depressive feelings correlating with internal external locus of control scores.

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