Subjects were told to set levels of aspiration under four different social situations in pitching quoits. The four situations were: (1) to play individually,(2) to compete between two persons of the same ability,(3) to compete between a pair of good friends,(4) to compete between two randomly selected persons, from whom the best five were to be announced after competition. GDS' in each situation were recorded and the attitudes of shifting aspiration levels were observed.
We discriminated the following five patterns of attitudes.
Pattern A: Shifting levels upward and downward in accordance with success and failure, adjustive pattern.
Pattern B: Keeping same level regardless of their own performances, rigid pattern.
Pattern C: Shifting upward after failures and downward after successes, reactive pattern.
Pattern D: Setting much lower levels than performance, negative pattern.
Pattern E: Inconsistent pattern.
Comparison of those patterns with evaluation on certain personality traits of the subject revealed this:
(1) Those whose personality was secure showed Pattern A.
(2) Those who faced failure frankly showed Pattern A.
(3) Those who were satisfied with their own status also showed Pattern A.
(4) Those who were conciliatory varied attitudes in setting levels of aspiration accoding to the atmosphere of the situation.
(5) Those who were competitive had a tendency to adhere to the same levels of aspiration no matter what their own performance might be.
(6) Those who were evaluated as having good personalities showed wider goal discrepancy scores than those evaluated as having poor personalities.
(7) Attitudes in setting levels of aspiration did not widely vary within each person.
Upon the whole there was a considerable relationship between personality and level of aspiration behavior.

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This research was done as a part of the synthetic research titled “Culture and Personality,” which has been carried on by the Human Relations Interdisciplinary Research Group, Department of Neuropsychiatry, Nagoya University School of Medicine, financially supported by Rockefeller Foundation. The chief of this research group is Prof. Muramatsu.
To study the personality of pre-school children, a new personal test was made. It consists of twenty picture cards. Each of the cards shows some situation which is familiar to young children. Presenting these cards one by one, a tester explains to a testee the situation in the picture. Then the tester asks him to tell what the child in the picture will do or is doing. The testee, a young child, describes the situation, identifying himself with the child in the picture. Therefore his personality can be somewhat revealed by his description. To find out the personality of the testee through his description is the purpose of this test. It might be said that this test is a kind of questionnaire modified for pre-school children.
176 children participated in this study. They were 4, 5, or 6-year-old children of kindergartens in one of the largest cities in Japan. Through this test we have studied how much effect the following seven factors had on the formation of a child´s personality: the sex of a child, the age of a child, his position as a sibling, the age of his mother, his mother´s academic career, the pattern of his family, and his family´s social class. These seven factors could be divided into three groups according to thecse attributes: 1) the child´s attributes, 2) his mother´s attributes, and 3) the attributes of his family. Relative to the child´s personality the three aspects-aggression or withdrawal; warmth or coldness; and independence or dependence-were taken up.
The primary results of the study are the following. It was the child´s attributes that had the greatest influence on the formation of his personality. For instance, boys are more independent and more aggressive than girls. As they grow, both boys and girls incline to independence, withdrawal, and warmth. Personality of the first children is different from that of the last. These findings indicate that the parents do not expect all of their children to take the same role. The expected role differs according to whether the child is a boy or a girl, and according to whether he is the first or not. One child is brought up differently from his brothers and sisters. The difference of rearing brings the difference of the personality.
The parents´attitudes toward child rearing depend on what they expect their child to be. And these attitudes may have a close relation with the second and the third attributes. In this sense, it can be said that even the second and third attributes had considerable indirect effect on the formation of child´s personality.

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In the present experiment kindergarten children were used as subjects who were trained to choose the stimulus box containing a marble. The stimulus boxes were paired between those which differ in two dimensions, color and size, and presented simultaneously throughout the experiment. In the first learning situation, the Reversal Group was trained on a color discrimination with a certain color, white or black, reinforced, whereas the Nonreversal Group was trained on a size discrimination with a certain size, the larger or the smaller, reinforced. When a certain criterion was met in the first learning situation, the second learning situation followed without any instruction. In the second learning situation, only a pair of stimuli was presented to all subjects and the negative stimulus in the first learning situation was reinforced. Moreover, a control group which had not participated in the first learning situation was added in the second learning situation. When the criterion, 5 successive correct responses in the seconcl learning situation, was met, the third learning situation followed. In this situation, another pair of stimuli was added again and all subjects were trained on color discrimination, with the same color as that of the positive stimulus in the second learning situation reinforced, until 5 successive correct responses were achieved. The pair of stimuli unused in the second learning was presented at the first trial in the third learning situation.
Moreover, each of the experimental groups was divided into 4 subgroups respectively with respect to the criteria in the first learning situation of 3 and 5 successive correct responses, 10/11 correct responses and 10/11 correct responses plus 5 successive correct responses.
The results are as follows:
1) The more the amount of training during the first learning situation, the more difficult became the second and the third learning situations until the point where the criterion of the first learning was 3 or 5 successive correct responses, then they became easier beyond this point.
2) The comparison of the numbers of trials to reach the criterion in the third learning situation in Reversal Groups with Nonreversal Groups indicated the superiority of reversal shifts over nonreversal shifts.
3) The stimulus box choosen at the first trial in the third learning situation was the same to prior positive box in either dimension of color or size. It was recorded which dimension was choosen as relevant cue, i. e. which was abstracted. The result indicated that the Reversal Group trained on color discrimination during the first learning situation tended to abstract “color” with an increase of that training, whereas the Nonreversal Group trained on size discrimination during the first learning situation tended to abstract “size” with the increase of that training.
The results were explained in terms of connection procceses. That is, in the early period of discrimination learning, the immediate connection between physical stimuli and overt responses is dominant, thus the more pre-shift training the more difficult are reversal shifts as simple S-R theory predicts. With the progress of discrimination learning, however, the more complex connection at the higher level become dominant. This higher connection contains mediation-process between physical stimuli and overt responses, in which generalization between antinonyms or opposite cues appears. Consequently reversal shift become easier with the increase of pre-shift training in the later period of discrimination learning.

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