The Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology
Online ISSN : 2186-3075
Print ISSN : 0021-5015
ISSN-L : 0021-5015
Volume 47, Issue 1
Displaying 1-13 of 13 articles from this issue
  • KEIKO EJIRI
    1999 Volume 47 Issue 1 Pages 1-10
    Published: March 30, 1999
    Released on J-STAGE: February 19, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The present study examined the role of auditory feedback on the synchronization between vocalizations and motor actions in the prelinguistic stage. The vocal behavior of a deaf infant was compared with that of 4 hearing infants in a previous study. The subject was observed at home once a month from the age of 6 to 11 months. Videotapes recorded during the observation period were analyzed. The results showed that synchronization between vocalizations and rhythmic actions occurred in the deaf infant as well as in hearing infants. However, the frequency of occurrence of synchronization was not so high compared to that of hearing infants. These findings suggest that auditory feedback might have the role of promoting synchronization between vocalizations and rhythmic actions.
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  • HIROSHI YAMA
    1999 Volume 47 Issue 1 Pages 11-18
    Published: March 30, 1999
    Released on J-STAGE: February 19, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The Wason selection tasks of both abstract standard version and its negated variant, i. e., if “p”then not “q”, were given to 36 subjects, who were then asked to decide whether each card should be checked or not and make a confidence rating between 1 and 5. They were also asked to provide retrospective protocols after both tasks, by being questioned about the reasons for each decision. When they showed inconsistency in their reasons, further prompting questions were made till it was resolved in their mind. The selection data showed that the subjects were more likely to select cards of which the contents were explicit in conditionals, supporting a matching bias account (Evans & Lynch, 1973), but from the protocol data it could be inferred that in an affirmative standard version, some subjects made confirmation while others made biconditional interpretations after an intuitive relevance judgment.
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  • AYAKO SAKAKIBARA
    1999 Volume 47 Issue 1 Pages 19-27
    Published: March 30, 1999
    Released on J-STAGE: February 19, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In the present paper, the process of acquiring absolute pitch was investigated. A 3-year-old child was trained every day for 19 months to acquire absolute pitch. The contents of the training were tasks to identify 9 kinds of chords. According to Eguchi (1991), the ability to identify these chords qualified as acquisition of every white-key note's absolute pitch. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the transition of cognitive strategies longitudinally in this training process. According to the view that the attributes of tones have two components “tone height” and “tone chroma”, absolute pitch possessors were supposed to have a strategy depending on “chroma” in identification of pitch. Results showed that 2 strategies were observed in the training process: one depending on “height”, and the other depending on “chroma”. The process of acquing absolute pitch was divided into 4 stages: Stage 1: always depending on “height” Stage 2: n oticing “chroma”; Stage 3: confusing “height” and “chroma”; and Final Stage: identifying pitch accurately, depending on “height” and “chroma”.
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  • 5-6-Year-Old Children's Understanding of Plausibility and Application of Dissimilarity of Premise Categories to Inductive Arguments
    CHIKA SUMIYOSHI
    1999 Volume 47 Issue 1 Pages 28-39
    Published: March 30, 1999
    Released on J-STAGE: February 19, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The present study examined children's ability in category-based induction. Two competences-their understanding about the nature of the plausibility of inductive arguments and their utilization of the dissimilarity of premise categories for judging plausibility-were investigated. The experimental task was paired comparison of three arguments regarding the plausibility. Experiment 1 clarified that children could consistently choose more plausible arguments through three comparison trials. This means that they could order the arguments according to plausibility. The patterns of order were analyzed in order to clarify whether they could apply the degree of dissimilarity of premise categories to estimating plausibility. The result of analysis showed that the majority of children could order the arguments based on the degree of dissimilarity of the premise categories. The above two findings were replicated in Experiment 2, in which the combination of the premise categories was more complex. The results of the two experiment suggest that children understand the transitive nature of the plausibility of inductive arguments, and that they realize that the degree of dissimilarity of premise categories can be used as a cue for estimating plausibility
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  • YASUHIRO OMI
    1999 Volume 47 Issue 1 Pages 40-48
    Published: March 30, 1999
    Released on J-STAGE: February 19, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Social support networks of Japanese children and adolescents were explored. Grade 5 elementary school children, 1st to 3rd year junior high school students, and 2nd year high school students completed a social support network questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of 9 multiple-choice items regarding support providers, namely, father, mother, intimate friend, school teacher, etc. Composite scores (support scores) for each support provider were calculated by sex and grade. Some differences between grade 5 elementary school children and junior high school students in support scores were found. Generally, support scores of female students were higher than those of male students. Support scores for public school teachers and private school teachers were generally low. The principal component analyses for support scores were performed by sex and grade to examine the relationships of support providers. Generally, family members, school teacher, and intimate friend were highly loaded in the first principal components. It was found that a small number of students who chose only public school teacher or private school teacher in each item also existed. Finally, issues relating to measurement of social support were discussed.
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  • KOJI KOMATSU
    1999 Volume 47 Issue 1 Pages 49-58
    Published: March 30, 1999
    Released on J-STAGE: February 19, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In the present study, discrepancy among three perceptions of social characteristics of elementary school children was investigated in relation to characteristics of the child-mother relationship. Subjects were 223 3rd-graders, 243 6th-graders and their mothers. On the basis of personality theory and the result from a preliminary study, a social characteristics inventory measuring Extroversion, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness was developed. Using this inventory, self-perception, mother's perception perceived by children, and mother's actual perception were measured, and 2 discrepancy scores were calculated. One was a discrepancy score between self perception and mother's perception perceived by children (intra-self discrepancy score) and the other was a discrepancy score between mother's perception perceived by children and mother's actual perception (child-mother discrepancy score). Children's perception of social support from their mothers was negatively correlated with intra-self discrepancy score, and frequency of child-mother conversations on the social characteristics of children was also negatively correlated with child-mother discrepancy score and intra-self discrepancy score. These results supported the hypothesis about the social process, through which a child's self-perception was constructed, and a significance of social relationships was suggested.
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  • TAKUMI IWAO
    1999 Volume 47 Issue 1 Pages 59-67
    Published: March 30, 1999
    Released on J-STAGE: February 19, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The purpose of the present research is to examine the influence of expertise in confirmation judgment of category-based induction. In experiment 1, doctoral students who were majoring in biology judged confirmation of category-based induction on the illness of birds. Research such as Osherson, Smith, Wilkie, Lopez, & Shafir (1990) has showed that undergraduates with arts backgrounds judged confirmation according to the coverage principle. But doctoral students in biology judged confirmation according to diversity principle, in both general and specific inductions. In experiment 2, in order to find out whether this result was due to expertise in biology, doctoral students majoring in mathematics/physics/psychology judged confirmation of general induction. Even when graduate school students in the same specialty at the same university made judgments, individual differences were seen in the manner of confirmation judgment of category-based induction. Many subjects judged confirmation according to the diversity principle, but subjects who judged according to the coverage principle were seen, too. Therefore, it is likely that the diversity principle in category-based induction was not due to expertise in biology or natural science, but rather was a heuristic strategy of researchers in general. But further research must be done on the belief or knowledge concerning the conclusive factor to determine whether one conforms to the diversity principle or the coverage principle.
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  • TAKAHIRO TAMURA
    1999 Volume 47 Issue 1 Pages 68-77
    Published: March 30, 1999
    Released on J-STAGE: February 19, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In two experiments, 40 five-year-old children and 44 adults were tested on an object named novel word selection task. The subjects were presented with 1 unfamiliar object and 3 familiar objects. Information was given to subjects on the purpose of an action, and, in the case of the familiar objects, whether it had high or low suitableness for that action. The 5-year-old children in Experiment 1 were more likely to select the familiar object with high suitableness in using it for the action than the object with low suitableness. Adults in Experiment 2 also indicated roughly the same result as the 5-year-old children. However, in the first case of the familiar objects with low suitableness, adults were more likely to select the familiar object than the 5-year-old children. These findings suggested that three factors were related to the rejection of mutual exclusivity in the lexical learning process, i. e. information on the purpose of an action, the suitableness in using a familiar object for an action, and the age of the subjects.
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  • YUKO FUKAYA
    1999 Volume 47 Issue 1 Pages 78-86
    Published: March 30, 1999
    Released on J-STAGE: February 19, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The purpose of the present paper was to propose a practical method of revising texts to enhance students' learning. The method used here was originated by Britton & Gülgöz (1991) and was translated to be more practical and applicable to Japanese texts. It was applied to revise part of the junior high school history texts so that the revised ones would be more locally coherent than the original ones. In the present experiment, either revised or original texts were assigned to 115 seventh grade students who had not learned its content. Their performance was measured in immediate and delayed conditions. The results showed that readers of the revised text performed better than those of the original one. Educational implications from this study were as follows: a) if students learned new things from texts, they would benefit more from ones with good local coherence (considerate texts) rather than inconsiderate ones; b) the method used here to revise a text for local coherence would be more practicable for an instructional text.
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  • Developmental investigation of speech and gesture
    Mihoko FUJII
    1999 Volume 47 Issue 1 Pages 87-96
    Published: March 30, 1999
    Released on J-STAGE: February 19, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    This study ontogenetically examined the relation between the ability of speech and gesture production. Four-year-old preschoolers, 5-year-old preschoolers, 1-3rd graders, 4th-6th graders, and university students (N=56) were instructed to explain a swing and a slide verbally. Their explanation was video-recorded and analyzed. The results showed that, although the total duration of speech production increased linearly as a function of age, the frequency of gestures changed tracing a U-shaped pattern. Gesture production decreased in school children but not in university students. Each group produced gestures different from those of other participants with regard to the pattern. Beats were produced only by university students while the viewpoint of gestures and speech-gesture relations differed between groups. Only university students produced gestures regarded to be profoundly related to language competence. Gestures produced during the early period of human development were considered complementary to language competence, while those produced by adults were seen as redundant to their speech.
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  • Hisae TOMITA, Fujio TAGAMI
    1999 Volume 47 Issue 1 Pages 97-106
    Published: March 30, 1999
    Released on J-STAGE: February 19, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The purpose of this study was to examine the effect that self-evaluation, by video analysis, had on the modification of teachers' helping skills for 3 to 6-year-old children in kindergarten. Six teachers were required to record their daily classes on video. While watching the recordings, they evaluated themselves on 40 items of helping skills 5 times, in consecutive intervals within a 2-week period. One group started in May, while the other group started in September. The categories of the skill targets were Direct Skills, i. e., holding and playing with children, a direct approach using verbal and nonverbal language, Supporting Skills, i. e., looking over children's activities or staying close to them, an indirect approach by using nonverbal language, and Other Skills, i. e., suggesting play and emotional comforting. Both sets of teachers' improvement varied according to the age group of their class. The intervention resulted in an increase in the variety and frequency of Direct and Supporting Skills, while other skills did not show any improvement. This study found self-evaluation using video analysis to be effective for improving helping skills.
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  • AYAKO ITO
    1999 Volume 47 Issue 1 Pages 107-116
    Published: March 30, 1999
    Released on J-STAGE: February 19, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The purpose of this paper is to review the advances and issues in use of the Role Construct Repertory Test (RCRT) as an ideographical method in educational psychology. First, Kelly's (1955) Personal Construct Psychology and the RCRT in its original version were described. Second,“RCRT for teachers” (Kondo, 1995) as an example of the RCRT in Japan was reviewed. Third, some research using the RCRT in the teacher education area was described and the importance of the RCRT in that area was discussed. Fourth, research projects about learning and learning activities using the RCRT were examined. The RCRT was a fruitful method which enabled us to elicit the implicit constructs of a person. Then, the use of RCRT in educational psychology area was discussed and the conclusion was of value to a practical and ideographical approach in the field of education.
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  • 1999 Volume 47 Issue 1 Pages 118-
    Published: 1999
    Released on J-STAGE: February 19, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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