Noboru Takahashi

This research examined the relationships among phonological awareness, vocabulary, and spelling in English among Japanese children. Phoneme isolation from words, blending phonemes into words, and phoneme deletion from words were used to assess phonological awareness in English, based on the work of Stahl and Murray (1994). The participants were 73 first- and second-grade junior high school students. While the second-grade students had better vocabulary knowledge, there were no differences in phonological awareness and spelling between the two groups. Their errors in phonological awareness were mainly mora-based, i.e., the students answered based on morae instead of phonemes. The results of hierarchical regression analysis, with vocabulary as a dependent variable, showed that grade and spelling explained more than fifty percent of the variance. Phonological awareness, especially phoneme blending, explained a significant amount of the spelling results. Phoneme-based phonological awareness rather than mora-based awareness is apparently needed for the acquisition of spelling knowledge by Japanese children, which in turn is closely related to the acquisition of vocabulary.

This paper reports the characteristics of a grammar-discourse test which was developed as a subscale of the ATLAN (Adaptive Tests for Language Abilities). ATLAN, which can be used via the Internet, is a collection of sub-scales used to assess different language abilities, mainly in middle childhood. In Study 1, we prepared 67 items from 8 grammar categories for elementary school children and 67 items from 12 grammar categories for preschool children. Participants were 309 children from the first to third grades and 258 preschoolers from 3-6 years of age. One hundred and twenty eight items were chosen based on the results of study 1, as an item pool for a grammar-discourse subscale of the ATLAN. In Study 2, 59 preschool children responded to the two subscales of the ATLAN, grammar-discourse and vocabulary, in addition to the LC Scale (Language Communication Developmental Scale; Otomo et al., 2008). The results of multiple regression analysis, in which the child's score of LC Scale was a dependent variable and the two ATLAN scores were independent variables, showed that 48% of the variance on the LC Scale was explained by the two ATLAN subscales. A discussion focused on the possibility of expanding the ATLAN tests.

In this study, children in four nations were compared concerning the thinking and activities of children with regard to money. A questionnaire survey was conducted on students in the 5th grade of elementary schools, 2nd grade of junior high schools, and 2nd grade of high schools in Japan, Korea, China, and Vietnam. The questions focused on the following points: how children get money, children's actual behavior and awareness of social norms (judgments of right and wrong), peer relationships, and parent-child relationships, in relation to children's use of money. The results were as follows. Children's experience using money was more profound and their attitudes about using money were more positive in this order: Japan, South Korea, China, and Vietnam. Japanese children were most aware and Vietnamese children least aware that pocket money was their own money. Japanese children, compared to Korean children, had more negative attitudes toward treating friends to foods and lending money within friends. Based on these results, a discussion followed concerning with affluence and poverty.

This study examined developmental processes of parent-child relations, in terms of the give and take of money between children and others. A questionnaire survey was conducted on students in the 5th grade of an elementary school (N=134), 2nd grade of a junior high school (N=225), and 2nd grade of a high school (N=173) in Osaka, Japan. The questions focused on the following points; how children get money, children's actual behavior and consciousness of social norms (judgments of right and wrong), peer relationships, and parent-child relationships, in relation to children's usage of money. The results showed the children's developmental processes of independence from their parents, and the formation of a social self. With age, they increased in their economic strength, purchasing activity, and earning activity, shifted from give and take of money under parental authority to use of money in peer relationships, and became independent of their parents' consciousness of norms. These data indicated that the developmental process of children-parent relationships is embedded in collaborative activities, as mediated by cultural tools and artifacts.

The present research used item response theory to develop the Adaptive Tests for Language Abilities (ATLAN) for elementary school children. These tests, which are available on-line and also for stand-alone computers, are comprised of 2 subtests: vocabulary and kanji reading, both of which are componential language skills needed for Japanese reading comprehension. Children from preschool to junior high school (N =3,067) participated in determining the parameters of each item in the vocabulary subtest, whereas 4,463 children from elementary to junior high school participated in the development of the kanji reading subtest. Because the results of a simulation using the Adaptive Tests for Language Abilities adequately replicated the original data, the parameter estimation was judged to be reliable. The tests also have validity, because the results from each subtest moderately correlated with existing vocabulary and kanji tests. Advantages of the Adaptive Tests for Language Abilities are that they need fewer items than existing tests for measuring these abilities, and that different patterns of items are shown for different children. Copyright © 2005-2009 National Institute of Informatics. All Rights Reserved.

In this paper, vocabulary development in elementary school children is reviewed. School children acquire as many new words as preschool children everyday. The process of their acquisition is, however, different from the process in preschool years. First, their understanding of words becomes more sophisticated, i. e., becomes more precise, and the children come to know two or more meanings of one word. Second, once they know a certain number of words, they can infer the meaning of derived words, which have morphemes in common with or related to known words. Third, children learn the meaning of new words not only through direct instruction in school, but also from contexts where they meet new words in everyday reading at home. Other vocabulary development problems to be investigated are discussed.

The learning activity systems of disabled children attending local public school in Japan were analyzed within the framework of activity theory. The children participated in several different activity systems at the same time, all which have certain structural features in common. These include Subject child, the presence of adults who guide the child's learning, the goals that those adults have, and the ontogenetic history that constrains the goals. In this study, two systems, family and special education classroom, and their relationship were analyzed. The data was from my experience as an advisor of parents and teachers of disabled children who attend special education classes in local public elementary and junior high schools in Japan. When both systems are mediated by the same Subject child, two kinds of contradictions became visible, both of which are the possible moment of the development of each system : intra-systemic and inter-systemic contradictions. The latter occurs because the adults in each system envision the future of the same Subject child based on the different ontogenetic history of the system, and the former occurs because the possible future of the child has to be envisioned based on the existing past. The possibility of the resolution of the contradictions and the development of the systems when they experience a shared ontogenetic history is discussed.

The relationship between reading ability and other skills that are components of reading ability was analyzed longitudinally in the present study. The children who were participants in the study were attending public school in Osaka, and had participated in a previous 2-year longitudinal study (Takahashi, 1996a). They participated in the study while in the first, third, and fifth grades. At the end of first grade, the speed of naming hiragana words was quicker in those children who had acquired the skill of reading hiragana script before entering school than in children who had learned it in school naming speed strongly determined the children's reading comprehension. As the children became older, the differences among the children in naming speed diminished, and the relationship of speed to comprehension also became weak. When the children were in the fifth grade, the speed of naming kanji words was not related to reading comprehension. That is, the efficiency of processing at the level of encoding did not determine the children's reading ability when they were in the fifth grade. The size of their vocabulary had, on the other hand, a continuously strong influence on reading comprehension, which could be explained by reading comprehension in the third grade. Reading ability and vocabulary had, therefore, a reciprocal relationship: elementary school children increased their vocabulary through reading, and the strength of their vocabulary determined their reading comprehension.

This paper reports 3 experiments about how Japanese preschool children play one of their favorite word games, "shiritori" (cap verses). It also concerned the relationship of shiritori to phonological awareness and reading kana syllabary scripts. Experiment 1 and 2 indicated that two kinds of phonological processing ability are needed to play shiritori without adults' help : (1) isolating the last syllable of a word and (2) retrieving words that begin with a specific syllable. The results do not mean that children have good vocabulary, but rather that they need to recompile their mental lexicon that has a sound index. Experiment 3 showed that there are close interrelationships among shiritori, reading of kana script, and phonological awareness. It also indicated that children who have insufficient phonological processing abilities can participate in shiritori activity with adults' help. It was concluded that children begin to participate in word play activity peripherally, and that helps them to refine their phonological awareness which benefits them to learn to read kana script.

The objective of this study was to investigate the acquisition process of reading ability during preschool and 1st grade years, especially, to investigate longitudinally the relationship between subcomponents which composed the reading ability. Children were tested about their reading ability and subcomponents of it, e.g., decoding skill and working memory capacity for four consecutive times : June and January in their kindergarten and June and February in their 1st grade. The following results were confirmed : First, the earlier they can read letters, the more quickly they can read words but not non-words. Second, the performance of listening comprehension task were explained by working memory capacity and vocabulary. Third, their reading ability was explained by listening comprehension performance and the efficiency of decoding words. The conditions which constrain their reading comprehension at this age level were discussed.

It was hypothesized that there are three independent levels of reading processing: Letter and word level, sentence level, and discourse level. Reading speed of 117 fifth-grade children were assessed, and clause length, position in each sentence, and position in passage were found to affect the speed independently. These features therefore must correspond respectively to the levels mentioned above. Since working memory capacity possibly determined the functioning of the three levels, reading span as the capacity was assessed in the study and incorporated into a multivariate path model, in order to predict ability in reading comprehension. The span and vocabulary explained the child's general reading ability. The ability together with domain specific knowledge explained the child's domain specific reading comprehension. Finally, the applicability of those findings to the programs to assist children who have difficulty in reading comprehension was discussed.

The objective of this study was to investigate developmental changes of processing speed of two different scripts, i. e., kana and kanji in elementary school years. In experiment 1, second and sixth grade children, and adults performed Stroop task, in which color words written in kana and kanji scripts were used as disturbing stimuli. Interference in kana script was bigger than in kanji for second grade children, but it showed about the same amount of interference between kana and kanji in the other two groups. In experiment 2, fourth grade children performed Stroop task, but this time, they were divided into two subgroups according to their knowledge of kanji letters. The result of good kanji group was similar to that of the sixth grades in exp. 1, although the poor kanji group showed similar performance as the second grades. These results showed that semantic processing speed of kanji would catch up with kana through elementary school years. Finally, the relationship between the semantic processing of kana and kanji in Stroop task and processing speed while reading sentences written by them was discussed.

To investigate young children's story comprehension, two experiments were conducted using two simple animated stories. Both stories were about the same length, but they had different structures, i.e., similar episodes were repeated for one story but not for the other. In Experiment I, just after watching the animation, children ages two to four were asked to recall the stories. The story with similar episodes was recalled at a higher rate among three-and four-year olds, but the two-year olds' recall rate was low for both stories. They made many errors mainly because they reconstructed the story during recall according to their past experiences. In Experiment II, children ages two to five recalled the stories, and the accuracy of their use of causal relationships was analyzed. Two-year old children's recall was not accurate for either story, and the recall of three-and four-year old children was accurate only for the story which repeated similar episodes. Only five-year old children's recall was accurate in its use of causal relationships for both stories.

The relationship between the reading ability and the basic word processing ability in the kindergarten, first, and third grade children were investigated. Picture Stroop task, word reading task, and visual and auditory word memory task were used to measure the speed and the degree of the automatization of processing words. The result of the path analysis showed that the reading ability in kindergarten children was explained by the processing speed and the degree of the automatization. It was concluded that for the beginning readers these basic processes decided their reading ability.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how children understood the plot of animated cartoons. Elementary school children from 1st grade through 6th grade and college students were to watch a T.V. cartoon. And then, they were asked about the story. The content of the interview consisted of two points: One was about the recall of the story, i.e., how much they would remember the content of the story, and the other was about the understanding of the characters, i.e., what attitudes they have toward them. The main results were as follows: 1) All groups of Ss remembered the story in structurally organized manner, but 2) the lower graders' recall was more episodic; 3) Elementary school children were seen to have more extreme attitudes toward the characters than college students. It was concluded that story understanding was at first based on fragmentary information gradually becoming based on more integrated information.