The present study investigated how the frequently used English word wear is understood by American students and Japanese college students studying English as a second language. The results of the two experiments revealed very different patterns between the native speakers and the L2 learners. The American students knew almost all of the senses of the word wear whether used in their concrete, prototypical senses or metaphorically extended senses and grouped the different senses into tightly cohesive clustres, which in turn comprised an orderly structured category of the word as a whole. In contrast, the Japanese students' understanding of the word was extremely impoverished, consisting only of the senses corresponding to the Japanese word “kiru”. The pattern obtained for the native speakers was consistent with a recently proposed theory treating word meaning as a structured category with single or multiple prototypes. The large difference observed between native speakers and Japanese students in understanding the meaning of a basic, frequent word such as wear points to the problem of traditional vocabulary instruction in second language classrooms, which exclusively relies on dictionary definitions.

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The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of violating expectancies in music on emotional responses. Subjects were 28 musician group graduates from colleges of music, and 32 non-musician group. Stimuli were four kinds of chord sequences which differed in the degree of violating expectancies. First, the degree of violating expectancies was measured by verbal ratings; Second, emotional responses were measured by verbal ratings and preference choice of paired stimuli. The results of every measurement showed that the degree of violating expectancies influenced emotional responses in both groups. Most of these effects were found to be inverted U-shaped functions, i, e, moderate degree of violating expectancies showed strongest effects on emotional responses.

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The relationship between the reading ability and the basic word processing ability in the kindergarten, first, and third grade children were investigated. Picture Stroop task, word reading task, and visual and auditory word memory task were used to measure the speed and the degree of the automatization of processing words. The result of the path analysis showed that the reading ability in kindergarten children was explained by the processing speed and the degree of the automatization. It was concluded that for the beginning readers these basic processes decided their reading ability.

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The present study describes the reliability and the validity evidence concerning a measure of a generalized perceived control for children (GPCC). A four points scale questionnaire consisting of 40 items was administrated to 353 Japanese primary and junior high school children. Construction procedures leading to the final 26-item scale were described. Score on the GFCC scale showed high internal consistency (α=.78) and a high test-retest reliability (r=.88). The validity of the GPCC scale was conformed to the following results: 1) Correlation between the GPCC scale and the CNS-IE (Nowicki, & Strickland, 1973) was -0.48 (p<0.001). 2) Compared to children with high-perceived control, children with low one showed more maladjustment symptoms, such as a stronger disire and inclination to not attending school, all proving a feeling of interpersonal maladjustment. 3) In the case of a controlled IQSS, the significant relationship between the GPCC and academic achievement with primary school children was partially proved.

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The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of the ways of coping with ‘uncontrollable situations,’ and its relation with life attitude.
Subjects were 146 people with physical disabilities (PPD) and 155 considered normal people (NP). The investigation consisted of a questionnaire on their life attitude, and a completion of stories on the coping with uncontrollable situations. The results were as follows: (1) By the factor analysis, three factors were identified; ‘the value of life,’ ‘positive expectation to the future,’ and ‘helplessness.’ (2) As the ‘uncontrollable situation,’ subjects were asked to complete both stories of (The individual with Disability) and (The Aged Person) who were confronted with the difficult situation of a life by themselves. More PPD answered that they would continue to live by themselves than NP. Moreover, more PPD responded with the instrumental coping to deal with the situation than NP.(3) Among the group of PPD, the ones who chose to give up their single life felt less than ‘the value of life.’

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Two concepts: social orientedness and individual orientedness, relating to two-dimensionality of self-consiousness, were proposed in order to grasp personality traits and adjustmental level and developmental level. Three questionnaires: an orientedness scale, a SD self-concept scale, and a self-esteem scale were administered to adolescent and adult subjects. The results showed that orientedness scores rose with increasing age, but a difference between males and females on both changing phase and process was found. Each orientedness changed in content, such as social orientedness following the next process: from dependency and others-direction to coexistence; on the other hand, individual orientedness followed the next process: from egocentrism to autonomy. These orientednesses mean the content of horizontal axis and vertical axis of two-dimensional developmental schema. From the relation with self-esteem, and discrepancy scores between real self image and two ideal-images: ‘social ideal self’,‘individual ideal self’, by SD self-concept scale, it was clear that the individuation process on emotional aspect, and the socialization process on the cognitive one could be observed.

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The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the expectancy of social support in junior high school students on school stress. 917 boys and girls, from 1st to 3rd grade, completed the Scale of Expectancy for Social Support (SESS), the School Stressor Scale, and the Stress Response Scale. The results indicated that (a) the SESS had a single-factor structure,(b) social support alleviated school stress more effectively in girls than in boys,(c) the alleviation effects of social support were dependent on the differences of stressful events, support resources, or stress responses, and (d) father support, which was less expected than mother support, was the most effective in alleviating stress responses in girls, but not in boys, Finally, the implication of social support for school stress process was discussed.

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The present study was an attempt to investigate the computer attitudes for education and the computer anxiety of in-service teachers and their correlates. Two scales, Computer Anxiety Scale (CAS) and Computer Attitude for Education Scale (CAES), were developed and administered to 675 in-service teachers. By factor analysis, CAS was divided into two subscales named “personal level anxiety” and “social level anxiety”, and CAES was also divided into three subscales as “human factors of education”,“literacy education”,“improvement of educational method and individualization”. The correlations between “social level anxiety” and three subscales of CAES were higher than the correlations between “personal level anxiety” and these subscales. The results of analysis by Quantification theory Type I were as follows: Gender and factors related to computer experiences were significant predictors of every subscale of CAS and CAES; Age was related to “personal level anxiety” but not to “social level anxiety”; Administrators were found to be more positive than teachers only in the CAES cases; There were differences between types of schools in several subscales of both CAS and CAES, though.

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In spite of the fact that career guidance in high schools has recently emphasized students' academic achievement, it is desirable that high school students develop career planning for future selection of their majors at the university and/or jobs, by considering not only academic achievement but also interests and attitudes. The primary purpose of this research was to investigate how high school students react facing their choice in future careers. For such purpose, we specified a causal model in which some relationships were assumed between eight constructs of career planning taking into account both aptitude and achievement. The model was subjected to covariance structure analysis, using data collected from 12,788 students in 84 high schools throughout Japan. It was shown that the appropriateness of the FIT Index was considerably high while some path coefficients were statistically significant, thus establishing the validity of the assumed model. From the analysis, it was found that guidance emphasizing academic achievement was not independent of the guidance emphasizing scholastic aptitude.

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The purpose of the present study was to analyze effects of each factor of self-instructional training. Forty undergraduate students participated in the experiment. The task was mirror drawing in which subjects were required to trace figures quickly and accurately, referring to mirror images of pictures. Relative effects of factors of self-instructional training, i. e., external instruction, overt self-instruction, and covert self-instruction were examined. Measures taken were 1) speed and 2) accuracy in the task, 3) the standardized compound score which considered both speed and accuracy, and 4) the self-efficacy score. Results indicated that external instruction was significantly better than any other conditions in speed and the standardized compound score. Neither overt self-instruction nor covert self-instruction indicated any significant effects. The limited effects of self-instruction when solely used, and the effectiveness of external instruction to strengthen subjects' motivation were discussed.

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In order to clarify the dominant mode of self-knowledge formation of Japanese college students, their favorite self-evaluative standards were compared with those of Japanese middle ages (Study I) and with American students (Study II). Thier individual difference were also examined (Study III). Respondents were asked to evaluate twelve aspects of their self-concept. They were then required to indicate what standards they used to evaluate themselves: (a) social comparison with similar others,(b) social comparison with dissimilar others, and (c) temporal comparison. In Study III, respondents also evaluated to what extent they agreed with an independent or interdependent construal of self (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). It was found that Japanese students used social comparison with similar others as standards more than middle ages (Study I) or American students (Study II), especially on the social and physical aspects of self-concept. The tendency that these aspects formed an undifferentiated cluster regarding the self-evaluative standard was dominant in Japanese students. Furthermore, these characteristics were found remarkably higher among those who strongly agreed with the interdependent construal of self (Study III).

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According to Markman and Wachtel (1988), children assume that words stand for mutually exclusive object categories, and so each object must have only one category label. This study examined whether children suspended their use of this assumption and interpreted a given novel label as referring to a familiar object; that is, an object whose name they already knew in their mother tongue (Japanese), when they were informed that the label came from a foreign language (English). The result showed that five-year-olds accepted the novel English label for a familiar object, while the three-year-olds and four-year-olds were not willing to accept it. To explain such result, the following hypotheses were considered. Children younger than 5 used mutual exclusivity to interpret a novel English label:(1) because the limitation of their capacity (Case, 1972) did not allow them to suspend the use of mutual exclusivity effectively, even if they knew English;(2) simply because only a few of them knew English. As a result, four-year-olds who knew English were found to suspend their use of mutual exclusivity when interpreting English labels. The second hypothesis was thus supported.

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The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between career decision-making self-efficacy confidence and career maturity. Twice with an 8 month interval, the scale of career decision-making self-efficacy expectations and the educational/occupational career maturity scale were administered to 71 2nd-grade high school students. It was found that students who showed high scores in the occupational career maturity scale and low scores in the self-efficacy scale did not keep their occupational maturity score during the interval. In contrast, all students scored highly on the educational career maturity scale at the second time. These findings suggested that career decision-making self-efficacy had significant influence on the occupational career maturity, while significantly irrelevant to the educational career maturity.

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