The purposes of the present study were to examine correlates of junior high school students' motivation toward formation of relationships with their teachers, maintenance of those relationships, expected costs and benefits of such consultation, and consulting behavior. Junior high school students (N=288) completed questionnaires. The results were as follows: (a) The students who had high scores on autonomous motivation reported having benefitted from consulting with their teachers. (b) The students who had high scores on controlled motivation reported that consulting with their teachers had costs. (c) The correlations differed according to the students' gender. (d) A high level of help-seeking behavior was related to a high level of intrinsic regulation and a high level of perceived benefit of avoiding consulting with their teachers. (e) The students who had high scores on all measures of motivation toward formation and maintenance of relationships with their teachers had a high level of perceived cost of consulting with their teachers, and a high level of perceived benefit from consulting as well as a high level of help-seeking behavior.

  The purposes of the present study were to explore effects of the internal working models of Japanese students who are in their first year of junior high school (7th grade) on their reluctance to attend school, and how those effects may vary according to the students' perception of class functioning. Junior high school students (N=295) completed questionnaires. The results indicated that, in particular, having higher school avoidance was positively correlated with reluctance to attend school. In addition, the ambivalence of those students who reported a low opinion of class functioning was correlated positively with aversion to attending school. Also, their school avoidance was correlated positively with their reluctance to attend school. However, although those students who felt that their classes functioned well were ambivalent, their ambivalence had less of an effect on their reluctance to attend school, and no such decrease was found in the students with an avoidant style. These results suggest that although improving class functioning may reduce the reluctance to attend school of those students with strongly ambivalent attachment styles, it is likely to remain difficult to reduce that reluctance in students who have strongly avoidant styles.

  The relationship between regulatory focus and task performance after people experience a stressful failure was investigated, based on the learned helplessness paradigm. The research examined the hypothesis that whereas there would be no difference in basic cognitive abilities for promotion focus and prevention focus before experiencing an event inducing learned helplessness, promotion focus would lead to better task performance than prevention focus after such an event. The participants (university students, N=57) were induced to have a promotion- or prevention-focused orientation. The results supported the hypothesis. The results also suggested that for mixed solvable and unsolvable tasks, the students with a prevention focus performed better than in those with a promotion focus. The results further suggested that the performance advantages of promotion and prevention focus differed, according to the context. A promotion focus was associated with resilience for recovering from setbacks and failures, whereas a prevention focus was suitable for performing mixed tasks.

  The present study examined the efficacy of group social skills training (GSST) combined with attention training for maintenance and generalization of social skills, and explored the extent to which reward sensitivity had an impact on effects of group social skills training. Children from elementary school (5th and 6th graders, N=342) and middle school (7th, 8th, and 9th graders, N=565) were assigned to either a standard group social skills training condition or a group social skills training plus attention training condition. The pupils in each condition were then subdivided into 2 groups based on their reward sensitivity. The results from those children who were unable to acquire social entry skills after receiving group social skills training aimed at a specific target skill were excluded from subsequent analysis. The results for the remaining children showed that the acquired target skill was maintained at a 1-month follow-up, and that stimulus generalization was promoted in all groups. The results from the measure of response generalization showed that prosocial behavior increased only in the groups (at both school-grade levels) getting group social skills training plus attention training, whereas aggressive behavior decreased in all the groups of elementary school children. These results suggest that response generalization is only very slightly promoted depending on the type of social skill, but that it may also occur if group social skills training is provided together with attention training.

  The present study examined whether classes on sexual diversity decreased the reported homophobia and transphobia of junior high school students. The participants in the experimental group were the students (N=397) in a school that had classes on sexual diversity; the control group was comprised of students (N=328) at a school with no such classes. Both schools were public schools, located near each other and with student bodies of similar size. The design was an equivalent pre-test post-test group design. Analyses of the data indicated that although the 2 groups had not been significantly different in the baseline measurement, the experimental group's scores on homophobia and transphobia decreased significantly compared to the control group's scores (F(2, 1336)=4.77, p<.01) after the classes on sexual diversity. No correlation was found between reported phobias and self-esteem. The data indicated that understating of diversity and equality for others by the boys in the experimental group was correlated with reported homophobia and transphobia.