In order to examine elementary school students' helplessness, constituent factors were identified from published research on junior high school students' helplessness and cognitive emotional development. Elementary school students' helplessness was validated through structural equation modeling. Specifically, the present research identified emotional expressions toward guardians as a factor in elementary school students' helplessness, based on the possibility that suppression of a child's emotional expression may be a factor in depression, one that impacts emotional functioning even more than cognitive functioning. In Study 1, 3 scales were created to measure children's emotional exchanges: sending and receiving positive emotion, children's sending negative emotions, and guardians' receiving negative emotions. The trustworthiness and relevance of these scales were validated. In Study 2, a helplessness model for junior high school students' helplessness was validated by adding informational exchanges with guardians to validated variables as a constitutive factor. The results indicated that all 3 scales could possibly measure increases in children's coping efficacy and decreases in their helplessness. Additionally, the results suggested that guardians' receiving negative emotions improves children's biased thinking, resulting in reduced helplessness.

  The present study examined factors that may affect elementary school teachers' help-seeking in the workplace, focusing on help-seeking preference as an individual attitude for help-seeking, inner attribution by the self and prediction of inner attributions by others as situational cognitive factors, and collaborative climate as an environmental factor. Effects of each variable on help-seeking intention was examined for different kinds of problems (school-related, poor academic performance, and class management) and helpers (colleagues and managers). Japanese elementary school teachers (N=176) completed a questionnaire after reading scenarios. The results from structural equation modeling analysis showed that, in all the scenarios, collaborative climate positively affected help-seeking intention, mediating positive attitude, which was an sub-concept of help-seeking preference. These results suggest that a collaborative climate is an important factor for promoting teachers' help-seeking in the workplace.

  The present research investigated influences of multiple socialization agents on social cognitive biases that may explain youths' anti-social behavior. It was predicted that parenting, teachers' leadership, and friends' delinquency would influence social cognitive biases directly, whereas community residents' collective efficacy would be an antecedent of parenting and teachers' leadership. Primary and junior high school students and their parents (N=1,404 pairs) completed a questionnaire. Structural equation modeling revealed that collective efficacy suppressed social cognitive biases, mediated by parenting and teachers' leadership. Perceived parenting, teachers' leadership, and friends' delinquency influenced social cognitive biases. Different mechanisms by which community residents may influence parents and teachers were implied in that informal social control promoted parenting, whereas social cohesion and trust promoted maintenance functions of teachers.

  With the recent rapid increase in implementation of the requirement that companies employ people with mental disabilities, training Employment Transition Support (ETS) service staff has become a problem, particularly because employment skills needed by workers and intervention strategies needed to support their learning of these skills, especially in relation to the bridging period from support by medical and welfare staff to support in the workplace, are unknown. The present study aimed to identify processes by which people with mental disabilities acquire skills necessary for work, and processes that staff use to support them. The participants, 18 Employment Transition Support staff, were interviewed; the interviews were analyzed qualitatively. The analysis generated 55 concepts, 4 core categories (finding working skill gaps → teaching the procedures; finding social skill gaps → analysis of workers' skills → attending to workers' social experiences; finding cognitive skill gaps → doing a self-analysis → half-objecting after accepting claims; finding skills related to independence → collaboration with others), 19 categories, and 2 sub-categories. The process of supporting worker skill development by the Employment Transition Support staff was not simply one way from top to bottom, in the way that skilled trainers provide instruction in necessary skills. Rather, it was a reciprocal and cyclic process in which both the workers' employment-related skills and the staff's support skills developed as staff and workers continued to interact. Different interventions appear to be necessary for the development of different skills. Staff members' psychological factors seem to influence the development of their intervention skills.

  The present study explored differences between 3 help-seeking styles: self-directed help-seeking, excessive help-seeking, and avoidance help-seeking. Questionnaires were completed by university students. In Study 1, the degree of concern, social support, depression, and anticipated costs and benefits of help-seeking were measured; in Study 2, the experience of being worried, affiliation motives, and autonomy were measured. Useable results for Study 1 were obtained from 233 men and 409 women at 3 universities, and, for Study 2, from 271 men and 629 women at 5 universities. Although those respondents who were classified as having an excessive help-seeking style reported higher social support, they also reported higher depression and sensitivity to rejection, and lower independence. In addition, although those who were classified as having an avoidance help-seeking style reported higher independence, they also reported higher depression, and lower social support and self-determination. These results suggest that an excessive help-seeking style and an avoidance help-seeking style may have both positive and negative aspects.

  The present study examined impact of the fear of emotional over-involvement with a close friend who is depressed on evaluation of the severity and prognosis of the friend's problems, the friend's need to seek help from a student counseling service, and related factors. A scale was developed to measure fear of emotional over-involvement with depressed friends, and the scale's internal consistency and validity were examined. The results of a factor analysis revealed that the 9 items in the scale were comprised of 2 factors: fear of contagious depression and tendency to avoid confrontation. The scale had acceptable internal consistency and validity. The main results of structural equation modeling were that, regardless of participants' ability to identify depression, (a) the tendency to avoid confronting a friend's depression was positively correlated with an optimistic prognosis for the friend, and negatively correlated with the respondent's rating of the severity of the friend's depression, and (b) fear of contagious depression was correlated positively with the respondent's rating of the severity of the friend's problem. These findings suggest that university students who tend to avoid confronting depressed friends may underestimate their friends' symptoms of depression, whereas those who fear contagious depression may not underestimate them.

  The present study focused on collecting students' opinions using a class-evaluation questionnaire with a question-and-answers format as a method for clarifying what the students considered to be the most important knowledge that they had learned in the class. The question-and-answers format questionnaire was used in order to allow the students to focus on their first evaluation and impression. The oligopolistic (dominant) degree of knowledge gained at this time could approximately be described by a Zipf distribution. In addition, the cumulative probability calculated from the Zipf distribution was used to evaluate the degree of saturation of the observed findings, together with the different elements (evaluations, impressions) necessary to achieve a specific saturation. From the Zipf distribution data, 2 kinds of methods were devised: (a) where the number of findings obtained from the Zipf distribution of the questionnaire responses was the number of unknown types, and (b) where the number of findings obtained was limited. An index was proposed that was used to examine whether less specific knowledge was the dominant finding from the free descriptions obtained with the class-evaluation questionnaire.

  Because first-year university students are confronted with 2 problems, adjustment to university life and establishment of their identity, it is important to give them support during their first year. The purpose of the present study of first-year university students was to measure effects of assertion training on their assertion behavior, respect for others, perspective taking, expression of anger, subjective adjustment, identity, and self-acceptance. The participants, all in their first year at university, were divided into 2 groups: 28 in the intervention group, and 33 in the control group. The students completed questionnaires just before, just after, 2 months after, and 6 month after the intervention group received assertion training. Analysis of the data indicated that assertion training had an effect on the students' assertion behavior, anger expression, subjective adjustment, identity, and self-acceptance. The results were discussed from the viewpoint of the concept of assertion training and features of university students' personal relationships.

  The present study analyzed the interactions during reading lessons of a student with Down syndrome and moderate intellectual disabilities and his teacher, in order to consider their implications for teaching reading comprehension to students with Down syndrome more generally. The participant was a first-year junior high school student in a school for students with intellectual disabilities. After 8 lessons were videotaped, the videotapes were analyzed in terms of the student-teacher interactions after the teacher's inferential questions. Classroom discourse analysis was applied from the perspective of a socio-cultural approach. At the beginning of the 8 lessons, the student ignored the text in favor of his own knowledge. After half of the teaching unit, he became able to refer to the contents of the text. At that time, his knowledge functioned to support his inferences. The teacher followed up on the student's errors, refraining from evaluation, and requesting the roots of his interpretation. Gradually, the teacher increased the amount of information about the correct answers. This seemed to activate the student's mental functioning and to encourage him to develop his own reading strategies. These results suggest that analyses of how students with Down syndrome learn to read should focus on the changing processes when learning to read.