This study examined whether 4-year-olds and 6-year-olds attend to the relevant properties (shape or material) of solid objects in making inferences when adults demonstrate appropriate actions. In an experiment, the experimenter presented thirty-six Japanese 4-year-olds and thirty-three Japanese 6-year-olds a nonsense label with an unfamiliar standard solid object and performed an action on the object that emphasized the shape (e. g., rolling) or the material (e. g., squeezing) of these standards. The experimenter then asked these children, given the same label, to choose an object that matched the standard in shape or in material, and the reasons for their choices. The results showed that the children of both age groups used action information to make inferences about the nonsense labels. Six-year-olds were found to be more adept than 4-year-olds in attention to action-relevant object properties. The importance of adults' input and the role of actions in the acquisition of word meanings were discussed.

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This study aims at testing a reactivation theory of the spacing effect by reference to the principle of repetition priming. Its basic assumption is that the amount of reactivation of either working or long-term memory, which is determined by space size, at the time of succeeding presentation determines the size of the spacing effect, which should be larger in distributed presentation than in massed presentation as the memory activated at the preceding presentation decays within the space. The principle of repetition priming is that the processing time of succeeding stimulus is in inverse proportion to the activation level of preceding stimulus therefore, it was thought that processing time could reflect exactly the amount of reactivation. In the experiment with space as an independent variable, lexical decision time and free recall rate of each stimulus were measured. The results showed that lexical decision time as an index of the amount of reactivation and recall rate correlate significantly, and that the space size determined whether working or long-term memory were reactivated. All of these results support the assumptions of the reactivation theory.

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The purpose of this study was to construct the social anxiousness scale for children (SASC) and to clarify its relation between social anxiousness, self-consciousness and social self-efficacy. In the first study, 341 fourth, fifth, and sixth graders answered the original SASC items. Eighteen items was selected on the basis of item-total correlation, Cronbach's α, and factor analysis. In the second study, 195 fourth, fifth, and sixth graders answered the SASC and social anxiousness subscale of General Anxiety Test (GAT), and teacher rating of children's social anxiousness was obtained in order to test validity for SASC. Between the SASC score and GAT score and teacher rating, significant correlations were obtained. Add to this, public self-consciousness and social self-efficacy were measured, too. SASC score was positively correlated with public self-consciousness score, and negatively correlated with social self-efficacy score. It was concluded that social anxiousness might be partly determinated by public self-consciousness and social self-efficacy.

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When we abstract the structure of three-way essay evaluation data, the aggregated matrix tends to show more unidimensional feature than that of each rater if the equal weights are used. Multidimensional Alpha Coefficient (MAC) proposed by Yanai (1994) gives independent sets of scoring weights which vary dimensionality of the aggregated matrices. The present study tried to extract the evaluation structure from three-way essay data by using the method for preservation of the original multidimensionality. The essay data of Taira (1995) evaluated by seven raters were used. Some criteria, including the factor analysis with Procrustes rotation method, were set to choose the most suitable weights. The result showed that the weights for the sixth solution of MAC was regarded as the best. The aggregated matrix yielded three factors, consisting of one more dimension compared with the former analysis. The revised path diagram showed much clearer causal relationships. The emotional factors on writing and reading had an effect on the ability of story making, whereas Writing Habits influenced only upon the Loyalty to the Task Condition.

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Three sessions were held: T1, T2, and T3. In Session T1, 192 1st to 6th graders observed two cars running on two parallel tracks on CRT displays and judged which car had run the longer duration. In Session T2, children observed them and judged which of the two cars had started first and which car had stopped first, then observed the same movements and again judged which car had run for the longer duration. In Session T3, children observed three times the same movement: they first judged the distance, then the speed, and finally the duration. The main results were as follows:(a) In younger children, judging correctly the same starting or stopping points as being the same was considerably difficult.(b) In older children, even if they could judge correctly the starting and stopping points, some of them did not use that information to judge the duration.(c) It seemed that for many children it was easier to use information on distance and speed than to use information concerning temporal starting and stopping points in order to judge the duration.

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The purpose of the present study was to examine whether significant relationships were found between subjective well-being and social interactions, and also whether a revised program through a writing method adopting a cognitive approach could increase the quality of social interactions and subjective well-being in adolescents. In the first study, we examined the relations between social interactions and subjective well-being. Social interactions were tested by the Rochester Interaction Record (RIR). The quality of social interactions implied closeness, enjoyment, responsiveness, influence, and confidence. The quantity of social interactions implied the number of other people with whom a subject related in a day. In the second study, we produced a revised program into which a program, through a writing method adopting a cognitive approach,(Nedate & Tagami, 1994) was modified. We examined the effects of the program on the quality and the quantity of social interactions and subjective well-being. Results indicated that the quality of social interactions related to subjective well-being and the revised program increased the quality of social interactions and subjective well-being and decreased the quantity of social interactions.

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This study intended a research on the types of naive mental models junior high school students used in order to understand electric heating, and also to research the possibility that their models might change from unscientific models to scientific models after scientific experiments performed by students. We found 11 types of naive models, which could be divided into two categories: “scientific models”, and “unscientific models”. The majority of the subjects showed “scientific models” at the time of the study. After the experiment, many subjects having unscientific models as their naive models, changed to scientific models while those who had scientific models in the beginning supported models with increasingly scientific sophistication. On the other hand, it was proved that one of the naive models could not be easily changed by the experiment. The above research showed that the experiment proved generally effective in changing student's naive mental models to more scientific ones.

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The purpose of the present paper is to show through experiments how effective ‘work arrangements’ may be when applied to assembling workshops. In experiment 1, a group of 71 junior-high school students made a ‘work arrangement’ before a job, and the quality of the ‘work arrangement’ was found to be positively, though not strongly, related to the quality of the products. In experiment 2, the same subjects were randomly divided into two groups, both doing the same assembling job, but one group used a ‘work arrangement’ while the other did not, so that the effectiveness of the ‘work arrangement’ could be measured. The results were then categorized according to the types of the subjects, namely,‘quick’ type and ‘slow’ type, to see how the types were related to the effectiveness of the ‘work arrangement’, categorization being made on the basis of experiment 1. It was found that the ‘work arrangement’ was effective in reducing work-hour and error incidence, but the effects were obvious only in the ‘slow’ type subjects.

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This study examined the effects of four situational factors related to bullying (ijime), i. e., the number of attackers, the relationship between the attacker and the attacked, the background of the act, and the type of the act, on children's cognition of an incident as ijime. Four hundred and sixty-eight primary school subjects and 318 secondary school subjects rated the degree to which they agreed the incidents, each of which was made by combining the four factors, as ijime. Three factors effect for primary school subjects' cognition, and all the factors effect for secondary school subjects', as well as some interactions, suggested that pupils' cognition of ijime was affected by a combination of these factors. Although primary school subjects considered the incidents as ijime more often than secondary school subjects, a particular type of act, neglect, was considered to be ijime by secondary school subjects more often than primary school subjects.

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This study aimed at clarifying the relationship between sex-role identity and self-actualization in terms of mental health. Subjects consisted of 86 male and 128 female undergraduate students, and they answered Self Actualization Scale (SEAS) and Bern Sex Role Inventory (BSRI). Our results suggested that female were more self-actualized than male, and that Androgynous and/or Masculine group were more self-actualized than Feminine and/or Undifferentiated group. The results of multiple regression analyses indicated that high masculinity was conductive and high femininity was detrimental to self-actualization. It was also suggested that masculinity was necessary for male to accept themselves and their weaknesses, and that femininity gave a positive effect on male only in company with masculinity. In contrast, for female, masculinity would provide some difficulties to accept themselves. Moreover, female would be required efforts to integrate the demands out of social values and sex-role that they possess.

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This study conducted a content analysis of various coping-behaviors of the characters illustrated in elementary school texts in Japan and England. 212 stories, appearing in the readers used for 6-to 9-year old children in Japan and in England were analyzed. Japanese and English texts were examined on the types of stimuli toward the characters in each story and their corresponding coping-behaviors. Two results were observed.(1) When the stimuli caused some conflict with the characters' requests or behaviors, the stimuli were portrayed to be more unintentional in the Japanese than in the English texts. This exemplified the Japanese interpersonal relationships where members were expected to avoid causing any intentional or direct conflicts with others.(2) The coping-behaviors of the characters in the Japanese texts accepted the conflicts caused by the stimuli more actively than in the English texts. The results not only supported Weisz's secondary control hypothesis, but also showed how Japanese members were expected to change their own requests actively or willingly depending on the situation.

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This study investigated the self-efficacy expectations of non-disabled students about interaction in the college context with students with disabilities. Three hundred and one non-disabled college students completed the 26-item revision of College Interaction Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (CISEQ: Fichten et al., 1987) with reference to interaction with a student who is visually impaired, or hearing impaired. The scale yields the following two scores: self-efficacy Level and Strength. Factor analytic procedures yielded two factors, named Friendship and Self-Assertion, from the Level scores, and one other factor, named Confident Rating, from the Strength scores. The factors obtained in the visually impaired condition were similar to those obtained in the hearing impairment condition. In the analyses of the relationships of the CISEQ factor scores to respondent demographic and experiential variables, a degree of interest in people with disabilities was significantly related to the Friendship factor; a respondent self-esteem was positively related to all factors; female respondents and respondents with people suffering disabilities in their families responded positively on the Friendship and Confident Rating factors, while responding negatively on the Self-Assertion factor.

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[in Japanese]

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