The purpose of the present study was to examine effects of mental operation of a rule on problem solving.  In the experiment, the following meteorological rule was used : the width of the Sea of Japan over which moist winter winds pass from China to towns in northwest Honshu and Hokkaido (in the northern part of the Japanese archipelago) corresponds to the amount of snowfall in those towns.  Participants, 99 undergraduates who had not previously learned the rule, were divided into 3 groups of 33 students each.  The experimental group was required to read a text explaining the rule and to relate the width of the Sea of Japan (i.e., narrow or wide) to the amount of snowfall (i.e., light or heavy).  That task represented mental operation of the rule. Control Group 1 read the text and then filled in blanks in sentences in the text.  Control Group 2 only read the text.  In the post test, the students were given problems that could be solved correctly by using the rule.  The scores of the students in the experimental group were higher than those of the students in the control groups.  This suggests that having estimated the amount of snowfall on the basis of the width of the sea facilitated use of the rule in problem solving.

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  The present study examines the impact of explanation activities on children’s learning from multiple solution methods to mathematics problems.  Participants were 189 fifth-grade students.  In Study 1, the children learned how to compare intensive quantity by either (a) explaining multiple solution methods, that is, an informal solution method and a formal one, (b) explaining the formal solution method twice, (c) evaluating the multiple (informal and formal) solution methods, or (d) evaluating the formal solution method twice.  The children in the (a) condition in which they explained the multiple solution methods showed better performance on the posttest in understanding the formal solution method than did the children in condition (b) who had explained the formal solution method twice.  In Study 2, explaining the multiple solution methods with a partner led to greater transfer performance.  These findings suggest potential mechanisms related to explaining multiple solution methods.  Explaining seems to result in the children comparing the two methods, differentiating the core unit of each solution procedure from its irrelevant units, and appreciating the essence of the formal method.

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  The present study investigated the development of children’s analogical reasoning, focusing especially on the questions of whether children base their correspondences on conceptual-relation matching, and whether analogical inferences follow those correspondences.  The participants (42 children, 14 each at ages 4 years old, 5 years old, and 6 years old) were first asked to decide whether a pair of stories had similarities, and then to draw an inference from one of the stories.  The pairs of stories had either both structural and perceptual similarities or only structural similarities.  The results indicated that the 6-year-olds were able to identify the similarities in the stories based on conceptual-relation matching, could make voluntary inferences that contained the identified similarities, and were not affected by the presence of perceptual similarities.  The 5-year-olds drew inferences from the second story on the basis of the first story only after they had been encouraged to match the stories.  The findings were discussed in relation to the ability to re-represent relational knowledge and the capacity to integrate multiple relations.

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  The present research examined the development of categorization by young children on the basis of the causal relations of properties.  Study 1 explored whether 4- and 5-year-olds who had been told that an internal property was the cause of behavioral traits then based their categorization on the internal property.  The participants were 20 boys and 20 girls at each age level.  The results showed that the 5-year-olds were strongly influenced by the internal property, unrelated to explicit causal relations of the properties.  However, the Study 1 results did not clarify whether the children’s categorization was based on their understanding of causal relations.  Study 2 explored whether 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds understand causal relations of properties and are influenced by internal properties.  The participants were 24 boys and 24 girls at each age level.  The results showed that the 4- and 5-year-olds could understand that an internal property was the cause of behavioral traits, and that the 5 year-olds were strongly influenced by internal properties.

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  In the present study, effects of intrinsic and extrinsic utility values on academic learning motivation were investigated.  Based on the goal theory of Kasser & Ryan (1993, 1996), intrinsic and extrinsic utility values were separated on the basis of their respective goals.  Intrinsic utility value was defined as the cognition that the current learning would be useful for achieving intrinsic goals, such as self-growth and social contribution.  Extrinsic utility value was defined as the cognition that the current learning would be useful for achieving extrinsic goals, such as fame and money.  High school tenth graders (N=318 ; 181 males, 137 females) completed questionnaires.  The results indicated that (a) intrinsic utility value promoted adaptive learning motivations, such as intrinsic motivation, through mastery goal orientation, and (b) extrinsic utility value promoted maladaptive learning motivations, such as anxiety, through performance avoidance goal orientation.

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  The present study focused on relations between the tendency toward non-attendance at school and the school-life skills of children who were in the process of the transition from elementary school to junior high school.  Participants (N=383) completed questionnaires when they were in the sixth grade (elementary school) and again when they were in the seventh grade (junior high school).  The main results were as follows : (a) All the tendencies of the students to be absent from school when in elementary school were related to their study skills.  The sixth graders who indicated that they wanted to skip school had less good communication skills ; those who reported that they wanted to play instead of study were engaged in fewer group activities and had fewer health-related skills.  (b) Almost all of the students’ tendencies to be truant when they were in junior high school were related to their study, health maintenance, and communication skills.  (c) The changes in all the students’ tendencies to be absent from school when they got to junior high school were related to their study and health maintenance skills.  The students who reported wanting to take time off from school had fewer group activity skills, and those who wanted to stay at home had a decreased variety of skills compared to when they were in elementary school.  Those who reported that when they were in junior high school, they felt an increase in the desire to play rather than study, or to engage in delinquent activities, had less good career-decision skills.  Those students who had a tendency to show psychological and physical symptoms had less good communication skills.

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  The purpose of the present study was to examine differential effects of intrinsic and identified motivation on the academic performance of Japanese junior high school students, focusing on the relation between those motivations and meta-cognitive strategies.  It was hypothesized that intrinsic motivation was independent of academic performance, whereas identified motivation was dependent on it, through the meta-cognitive strategies.  A scale was developed, based on self-determination theory, for measuring academic motivation.  In Study 1, the reliability and validity of the scale was confirmed.  In Study 2, path analysis was used to develop a causal model that supported the above hypothesis.  These results suggest that identified motivation is a significant factor in academic performance.

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  The purposes of the present study were to develop a social interest scale and to examine the scale’s reliability and validity.  The participants, junior high school students (7^th and 8^th grades, n=149 ; average age 13.08) and university students (n=329 ; average age 20.16), completed a questionnaire consisting of 24 items measuring social interest, college life anxiety, school adjustment, feelings of inferiority, psychological stress response, and narcissism.  Factor analysis yielded 3 factors : feelings of belonging to society and trust in society, self-acceptance, and feelings of contribution.  The reliability of the social interest scale was examined by measures of internal consistency and test-retest reliability, and was found to be high.  The construct validity of the scale was examined in terms of relations between the scale and the participants’ scores on college life anxiety, school adjustment, feelings of inferiority, and psychological stress response. In addition, the data suggested that social interest and narcissism were positively correlated.

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  In the present study, training was given to a 10-year-old boy with autism in an attempt to improve his joint attention behavior, which involved his directing another person’s attention.  Study 1 was a 3-step training program : (a) recognizing the direction of focus of the visual attention of another person, (b) identifying the object of the other person’s focus, and (c) giving the other person verbal instructions to direct their attention when appropriate.  Study 2 had 2 steps : (a) recognizing the direction of another person’s focus of visual attention, and (b) selecting a behavior that appropriately matched that focus.  Following this training, the boy’s target behavior improved, and he was able to generalize the behavior to various other settings.

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  The present study was designed to assist in the development of geography lessons for the second year of junior high school by applying the theoretical framework of conflict maps (Tsai, 2000) to learning about Japan from a global perspective.  Effects of teaching strategies using conflict maps on cognitive and motivational changes were explored with a class of 14 students.  Quantitative analysis of the results from questionnaires and interpretive analysis of free descriptions obtained from the students in the class before and after the experimental unit and after the lessons suggested the following changes : (a) The teaching strategy of conflict maps enhanced the students’ motivation for applying their knowledge to critical events by relating preceding concepts (microscopic comprehension, i.e., the discrepancy between geographical events in Japan and in the rest of the world) to scientific concepts (macroscopic comprehension, i.e., the regularity of geographical events on a global dimension) ; (b) the conflict map teaching strategy of applying information technology (IT) in terms of perceptual events to simulate topography enhanced the students’ integrative learning motivation ; and (c) as knowledge application motivation and integrative learning motivation improved, situational interest in searching for the significance of studying geography, as opposed to simply memorizing facts, was enhanced.

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