This paper discusses on the transition from childhood to adolescence and propounds a consideration on critical period in personality development. Although childhood or adolescence are restricted to historical situation, but the constitution of the fundamental transition from childhood to adolescence shows regularity based on the development of physical organisms and social relationships. In developmental theory of Erikson (1950), eight ages of man, he had emphasized that the changing of quality of the samenesses and continuities of one's meaning for others, that is called for "the development of ego identity", determine the contents of the transition. And Tanaka (1980, 1987, 1996), one of the famous researcher for child development in our country, presented the original theory that named "Theory of hierarchies and stages on the reversible operation in human development". In his theory of human development, the transition from childhood to adolescence is described as "period of leap in development". That is considered from the hierarchy of the reversible "Dimensional operation" to the hierarchy of the reversible operation "Transformation". But in his theory, it seemed that human relationships or emotion for others are not regarded appropriately. Following the research by Kato (2007), discusses on the problem of the genesis of function of representation, an idea regarding the role of "emotion" and "attitude" presented by Wallon is very important. He showed the thought of Wallon pointing out the discontinuity in human development. I think that "emotion" and "attitude" play the important role in the period of the acquisition of new quality for ego development and the transition.

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Various problems in adolescence or transition from childhood to adolescence have been considered deriving from identity diffusion. Recently, some researchers say that the construct of Erikson's identity becomes outdated. But identity diffusion should be reconsidered relating resolutions of the crises in other (previous) stages of psychosocial development. This study clarified the operational definition of Eriksonian industry by surveying Japanese version of four subscales to measure the crisis of latency because there are not many papers on Erikson's forth stage (industry vs. inferiority). According to the view of Kowaz et al., industry consists of three components (cognitive, behavioral and affective), and the items in four subscales cover most of them. But it is necessary to further investigate several aspects of these components, especially the relationship among competition, cooperation and industry. In addition, this study examines a new construct of assumed-competence, which is defined as emotion based on undervaluing others and low self-esteem, in connection with problem of psychosocial development. The new findings were that the undergraduates who demonstrated low assumed-competence showed a more satisfactory resolution to the crises of industry and identity than the subjects showing high assumed-competence, and that assumed-competence significantly correlated with competitive achievement motive, not with achievement motive for self-fulfillment. The pursuit of learning motivation based on the sense of industry is an issue in the future.

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