The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between motives for science learning and factors related to academic achievement in science by path analysis. Two hundred twenty-two junior high school students were given questionnaires on their perceptions of motives for science learning, and factors related to academic achievement in science, i. e., attitude for science(feelings for science), interest in and concern for biological teaching materials, and competence in science learning. Sub-dimensional components of motives for science learning was constructed. By applying factor analysis, four factors were found. Motives for science learning was evaluated by a mastery orientation scale, an activity orientation scale, a reality orientation scale, and a profit orientation scale. Based on previous work's model, a new causality model composed of four levels in science was constructed: attitude for science→interest in and concern for biological teaching materials→motives for science learning→competence in science. Through this analysis, the causal relationship between motives for science learning and factors related to academic achievementin science was revealed.

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The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis on the process of psychological weaning. A questionnaire on parent-child relationship in adolescence was collected. There were 86 questions. This questionnaire was carried out among 540 students including junior-high school, high school, university and graduate-school students. As a result, the factor analysis presented that the parent-child relationship based on psychological weaning might be classified in six patterns. It was clarified that there were five steps in psychological weaning based on the parent-child relationship. Furthermore, it was found that in adolescence the parent-child relationship changed from the state of relationship toward a child protected by parents to the state of relationship with the child trusted and depended by their parents.

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The present study investigated which factors facilitated solving arithmetic word problems in fifth graders by comparing five training techniques: (1) Self controlinterpretation training(SCI) that was to acquire both the self regulated uses of solving skill and strategy and the self control ability of evaluating one's own solving process, correcting it and interpretating it to others; (2) Blind training(BT) expected to enhance the awareness of solving skill and strategy; (3) Error finding training (EF) that was to monitor the other's solving process; (4) Ordinary teaching training(C) used in a public elementary school, and (5) 30-SCI training(30-SCI) that children had been given the SCI training for 30 hours before the basic learning had begun. In Experiment 1, fifth graders were trained under a given condition for three hours and then given four posttests. Group 30-SCI did better performance on each posttest than the 4 other groups. Group SCI also did better performance on posttests 1, 2, and 3 than Group BT. Experiment 2 using four training techniques confirmed the superiority of the SCI technique to the others found in Experiment 1 in third graders.

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Many teachers have seen children behaving peculiarly for scientific materials and events, and believed that a child might have “good sense” as the greatest scientists might have in their childhood. This study was designed to explore factors that disposed peculiarly-behaving children (PBC) for their own activities. Seventy-seven PBC, from grades 3 to 6, were chosen as “peculiar but anything good” from thirty-nine elementary classes and were asked to rate their motivation for each of the fifty-seven behavioral episodes collected from many school informants of other PBC in scientific classrooms. Factor analysis suggested five behavioral factors; expectative and imaginative exploration, impulsive trying action, assimilating to creatures, focusing and concentration, and task creation. Further analysis revealed that these factors were not recognized plainly and teachers would not evaluate them as such.

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This paper proposes a method for relating two sets of qualitative variables by extending weighted homogeneity analysis (WHA). WHA is a recently proposed method for partitioning a set of qualitative variables into multiple uni-dimensional groups and scaling in each group. In the extended model, multiple uni-dimensional groups of variables are constructed in each set, and at the same time, they are scaled so that the scales from one set of variables are correlated with the scales from the other set. The result is easily interpretable as compared with canonical correlation analysis which is usually used for two sets of quantitative variables. As a numerical example, the relation between the features of pictures and their impression is explored.

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The purpose of this study was to examine friendship in adolescence and how it changed in each developmental stage. A questionnaire regarding friendship was created. Subjects were 579 students. They were junior high-school, high-school and university students. As the result of the factor analysis, the friendship was categorized by the two-dimensional space. One axis conserned the intimacy of their friendship, and the other axis consisted on the number of their friends. Junior high school students tended to make many friends but their relationships were not so intimate. As they grew older, they tried to have more intimate friendships with just a few friends.

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This study is an attempt to scale the ability of Japanese 9th graders to use relative pronouns of English language, utilizing the difference in the degree of response construction required by three item formats. Subjects responses were scored into three categories according to their qualitative differences: correct relative pronoun, wrong relative pronoun, and other or no answer. Bock's nominal response model yielded a scale with a large amount of information, despite that the scale consisted of only 7 items. This scale could be characterized as a continuum from being unable to give a relative pronoun even when an item explicitly required one, to an ability to know the necessity of a relative pronoun in a composition, and the proper selection. The subjects ability estimates on this scale might be useful in planning further effective instructions.

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The aim of this study is to examine a role of kusho behavior in remembering English spellings. Japanese and Chinese subjects were given the task of verifying English spellings. In experiment 1, kusho behavior was observed among the majority of Japanese subjects. Furthermore, two types of kusho behavior were observed. One was the type gazing at their fingers during the task while the other was a non-gazing type. In Experiment 2, two groups were arranged according to their frequency of kusho behavior, in order to compare frequency of kusho behavior and its type. The esult showed that medium-high frequency group showed kusho behavior as frequently as Experiment 1, even though the task words were all phonetically discriminable. The medium-high frequency group showed no gazing and low frequency group made the only gazing type. Experiment 3 was done to clarify whether Chinese speakers, who use Chinese characters and obey a rich phonological system, would show kusho behavior in remembering English spellings. Kusho behavior was also observed among Chinese subjects, though their kusho behavior was all gazing type.

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The present study investigated whether giving reality information and the category names of the to-be-learned materials affect incorporating of the materials into subject's preexisting knowledge. Forty university students were instructed that they were to learn real facts, while 43 university students were instructed that they were to learn rtificial facts. Actually, the subjects in both groups learned unfamilliar real facts. Half of the materials consisted of category names with two attributes, and the remaining half consisted of three attributes. Immediately following the learning phase, the subjects received a recall test, a recognition test, and a matching test. They were given the tests again after 1-week interval. The results indicated that giving real information and/or providing category names facilitated the learning of the materials. These results were discussed in terms of incorporation process of new information into preexisting knowledge.

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According to previous theories, effects of repeated exposure of music on pleasingness depend on uncertainty of the music. In this study,“redundancy of rhythm pattern” and “prototypicality of harmony” were manipulated as the factors of uncertainty. The purpose of the following study is to examine effects of repeated exposure on pleasingness determined by the two above mentioned factors. Subjects heard tone sequences that represented four levels of redundancy and four levels of prototypicality, nd rated them on 7-point scales of “complexity” and “pleasingness”. Pleasingness was shown to be an inverted U-function of redundancy and prototypicality. And then, each tone sequence was repeated and rated pleasingness after each repetition. In a case of sequence whose redundancy caused most pleasingness before repetition, pleasingness of that sequence was decreased by repetition. But, in a case of sequence whose redundancy was too low to cause pleasingness before repetition, pleasingness was seen increased by repetition. On the other hand, pleasingness determined by prototypicality was not affected by repetition, and kept initial pleasingness during repetition.

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This study examined children's aggressive behaviors in a classroom through observation, and also examined relationships between the observed aggressive behavior and self-reports, peer nomination, and teacher rating for aggressive behavior. Subjects were 36 5th grade elementary school children and their classroom behavior was recorded for 1970 minutes during 90 days. The frequency of observed aggressive behavior was occured total 120, that is, type I (reactive aggressor's physical aggression (PA) for initial aggressor's PA) 16, type II (reactive aggressor's verbal aggression (VA) for initial aggressor's PA) 49, type III (reactive aggressor's PA for initial aggressor's VA) 32, and type V (reactive aggressor's nonaggression for initial aggressor's PA and VA) 23. Aggressive behaviors from girl to boy were more than that from boy to girl. Correlations between observed frequencies of initial aggression and teacher rating for an initial aggression, between observed frequencies of reactive aggression and teacher rating for an initial aggression, self-report for an initial aggression were significant. From these correlations prediction of aggressive behaviors were considered.

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The purposes of this study were to examine mothers conceptions of book-reading to their children and relations between those conceptions and their behavior styles of setting home environment on reading. Two hundred and ninety-three mothers in Study 1 and three hundred and thirty-two mothers in Study 2 answered a questionnaire concerning their recognitions on the functions, and their behavior of setting environment. The main findings were as follows: (1)Two functions were identified as “UTILITY” and “ENJOYMENT” (“UTILITY”: read to get children to master letters and acquire knowledge; “ENJOYMENT”: read to share a fantasy world with their children and communicate them.) Although many mothers attached importance to “ENJOYMENT” function, some mothers did to “UTILITY”; but diff erences were shown among mothers.(2) Mothers changed the ways of reading according to their children's age.(3) There were relations between conceptions of functions and ways of reading. Though mothers rated “UTILITY” higher, their reading styles were seen to promote children to become independent readers.

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