Koji Komatsu

Our life is full of invisibility that exerts power on our acts, relationships, and construction of the self. This paper discusses psychological processes in which invisibility plays an essential role, and constructs a typology of invisibility in society and in our lives. After a brief look at the crucial role of invisibility in prevailing theories of psychology, I first show how invisibility works in children's meaning constructions, the process in which their selves become clear for observers (the presentational self, Komatsu 2010). The development of children's meaning making is led by different types of invisibility concerning the children themselves. Second, I extend the discussion from the development of individuals to the role of socially regulated invisibility that controls our acts and relationships with others, introducing examples concerning religious belief in history. After these discussions, I present a hierarchical classification of invisibility from a simple spatial-temporal separation of concretely existing objects and ourselves to an abstract aspect of invisibility in which the object and its meaning are unclear.

Although our environments and ourselves are usually thought about as relatively stable over time, there is always a tension between sameness and non-sameness in our lives. Because any development is considered as emerging non-sameness, I report that the inquiry into the development of human mind must regard this tension as essential. In this paper, first I show that this tension is a highly relational and dynamic phenomenon that cannot be fixed or measured in numerical terms. Non-sameness is not only a result of development but also a ground that leads to further development in the future. After illustrating the function and regulation of the {same <> non-same} tension in development by analyzing an excerpt from a mother-child conversation, I explain that this tension, or more generally the dialectic nature, is within the core of psychological phenomena, in terms that were introduced to psychology by James Mark Baldwin a century ago. These discussions imply the importance of inquiring into the process of development that emerges from the dialectic tension and fluctuations of our movements and that is observable in various relationships, including the relationship between researchers and study participants.

The present study inquired into elementary school 4th graders' personal stories as told in diaries that they had written as a homework assignment, focusing on the children's selves in relation to others described in the stories and the reader of the diaries. On the basis of the children's style of writing and answers to a questionnaire asking the children about their beliefs about diary writing, diaries of 3 fourth-grade students (1 boy, 2 girls) were selected. Out of 537 diary entries written by these 3 students over 12 months, mainly describing their experiences in their homes and neighborhoods, 14 were chosen for analysis. A qualitative analysis suggested how others work to clarify children's selves in several types of expression that make the perspective of the child writing the diary more distinctive. These expressions included the children focusing on fine details of their experiences, describing conversations or their inner reflections in direct speech style, and criticizing others. The discussion deals with how these writings clarify the children's positions to their teacher who will read their diaries.

ショートレポート論文

Based on the recently developed Gitaigo personality scale (Komatsu, Sakai, Nishioka, &amp Mukoyama, 2012), we investigated the relationship between perceived personality and leading/following roles in close friend dyads. Primary participants rated their own and one of their close friend's personality with Gitaigo personality scale. They also described who takes the role of leader in the relationship with the friend they rated. When one in the pair is reported as leader, the other is considered as follower. Subsidiary participants who were cited as close friends rated their own personality. Our analysis of the 215 pairs showed that the participants taking the role of follower were rated higher in the traits of Cowardliness and Mildness by the primary participants. Regarding Mildness, this tendency was also clear in subsidiary participants' self-ratings. Primary participants rated the Preciseness and Candidness of their friends lower if their friend was considered a follower. Gitaigo personality scale describes the perceived personality well, at least for several traits.

In this study, I will elaborate and extend the theoretical framework of the presentational self (Komatsu, Human Development 53:208-228, 2010) that finds the self in two aspects of our interaction with others or objects. From this perspective, the self is not an internal entity, a representation that can be revealed voluntarily when directly queried by researchers (e.g., through items of a questionnaire or an interview), but is what emerges from constantly relating with the immediate environment. The process structure of being in the environment that emerges in this relationship is the presentational self, which both an external observer and the person him/herself can detect but not necessarily describe in words. For further elaboration, first, I clarify that the triangular relationship between a study participant, others or objects, and observing researchers, which is essential in the presentational self, is also common in the methodological presuppositions of existing psychological studies on the self. Second, I apply the framework to a daily activity of oral storytelling in a Japanese elementary school, where the emergence of children's self is observable through sequences of organized interactions with others. From these discussions, I demonstrate both the theoretical and practical importance of considering the self to refer to the relationships that we constantly create in our daily life.

Gitaigo is a subtype of mimetic words (onomatopoeia) in the Japanese language, which can be regarded as words that imitate actions or states. This study develops a personality scale, with six subscales, using 60 gitaigo words as items for rating the personality of the self and others. We asked 1 054 participants to rate their own personality and 905 participants to rate a close friend's personality, using 158 gitaigo words as items to describe personality. We found that a six-factor model, found in our previous study, was also applicable to the present study of ratings of participants' own personality. We also found six groups of words in the ratings of close friends' personality, although the factor structure is slightly different from the selfrating factors. We selected ten words that exhibited high loadings for each of the six factors to develop a personality scale with six subscales showing high reliability. We named those factors: Cowardliness, Slowness, Preciseness, Irritableness, Candidness, and Frivolousness. The average scores for self-ratings were significantly lower for two subscales (Preciseness and Candidness) and higher for other four subscales compared to the rating of others.

In this paper, I will examine the semiotic mediation process of meaning construction and the functioning of signs, focusing on a group of characteristic words, Gitai-go in the Japanese language. Mimic words in the Japanese language, including Gitai-go are applicable to various subjects based on their inter-sensory nature, and appear frequently in informal communication among Japanese, not only for young children but also in adults' communication. When I consider their functioning from the viewpoint of meaning construction, their characteristic feature is their indefiniteness that is open to diverse forms of extension, including that of no further elaboration and continuous diffusion of the affective flavor within the current setting. Though the process is interpretable in terms of the Japanese culture that is characterized by vagueness, it is also a clear exemplification of how the indefiniteness of signs works in the process of meaning construction and in our communication.

In this article, I take a relational and discursive perspective on young children's self observed in daily natural conversations, and consider the process of semiotic mediation in the observer's recognition. Based on the ideas of co-construction of relationships and identities in conversation, and using excerpts of dialogues between a young child and her mother that deal with the child's experiences at daycare center (hoikuen in Japan) recorded during their car rides, I present how the self of young children in relation to others appears to observers. I regard this genre of self - 'presentational self' - as a kind of Gestalt quality appearing in the act of positioning and in the configuration of the child and others presented through the conversation. As a basis of this process, I will discuss the semiotically mediated process of differentiation in 2 aspects of the conversation: first, in the process of conversation when the children and the partners make further extensions of what is shared, and second, in the array of self and others as exposed in the conversation. Copyright (C) 2010 S. Karger AG, Basel

In this study, natural conversations between a young girl and her mother were recorded in a car over a 17-month period (from ages 4:4 to 5:8), mainly when they were driving home from nursery school. Analysis of the recordings (34 hours over 153 days) focused on conversations that depicted the girl in relation to her nursery school friends. In 50 episodes concerning her interpersonal experiences at the nursery school, the girl frequently compared or enumerated her friends and herself, using several criteria such as their abilities or their roles in pretend play. In the early portions of the recordings, only simple comparisons and enumeration were observed. But later in the tapings, several narratives or explanations concerning the characteristics of the enumerated person were skillfully inserted into the enumeration. Whereas the mother directly supported her child's expressions in the early part of the research period, her role gradually changed, and the communication became increasingly mutual and collaborative.

This study investigated Japanese mimetic words "Gitai-go" that can describe personality, through classification based on factor analysis and correlation analysis with the Five Factor Personality Questionnaire (FFPQ). Japanese participants, mostly undergraduates (344 men and 702 women), were asked to rate themselves on a five point scale on each of 120 words. Factor analysis of the ratings yielded six groups of words.: "Cowardliness," "Slowness," "Preciseness," "Irritableness," "Candidness," and "Frivolousness." Correlations between these ratings and the personality scales were as follows. (1) "Cowardliness" showed a positive correlation with Emotionality, and a negative correlation with Extroversion. (2) "Preciseness" had a high correlation (r = .70) with Controlling and a low positive correlation with Extroversion and Attachment. (3) "Irritableness" showed a negative correlation with Attachment and a positive correlation with Emotionality. (4) Low negative correlations were observed between "Slowness" and Extroversion, "Candidness" and Emotionality, and " Frivolousness" and Controlling. The ambiguous but expressive nature of mimetic words was discussed in relation to the conceptualizations and descriptions of personality used in daily interaction.

This study examined mothers' reports of conversations with children about their experiences at kindergarten. In July and again November, mothers (JV=235) rated the frequency of conversations with their children concerning 15 topics, most often about children's interpersonal relationships. They also rated characteristics of children's speech in the conversations. The main findings were as follows. First, mothers and children talked often about children's interpersonal experiences at kindergarten; games, positive emotions, and children's talents were the most frequent discussion topics. In addition, the number of conversations about characteristics of children's friends increased between July and November, and discussions of how teachers benefited children were consistently less frequent in conversations with 5-year-olds than with 3-year- olds. Finally, repetition of topics and imitation of teachers or friends were more common for conversations with 3-year- olds than 5-year-olds. Children were very active participants in the conversations. Further study is needed to reveal the functions of mother-child conversations in daily life.

The purpose of the present study was to explore characteristics of daily conversations between the preschoolers and their mothers about the children's experiences at preschool, from the viewpoint of the mothers. Participants were 581 mothers whose children were attending preschool. The mothers' beliefs about the functioning of their conversations (information collection, education and support, sharing of experience) and the mothers' role in the conversations (questioning, comfort-giving, and so on ) were examined by means of a questionnaire. The results indicated that the mothers of 3-year-olds attached more importance to information collection in their conversations with their children than did mothers of 5-year-olds, although many mothers set relatively high valuation on the functioning of the conversations. Mothers' reports also suggested that they asked more questions and gave more advice to their eldest child. Further, significant positive correlations were obtained between some items concerning the mothers' role in the conversations and 3 scales of belief about the functioning of the conversations. These results imply that conversations about the children's experiences at preschool have practical meaning and functioning for the children's mothers, and are a point of contact between the preschool and the home.

In the present study, discrepancy among three perceptions of social characteristics of elementary school children was investigated in relation to characteristics of the child-mother relationship. Subjects were 223 3rd-graders, 243 6th-graders and their mothers. On the basis of personality theory and the result from a preliminary study, a social characteristics inventory measuring Extroversion, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness was developed. Using this inventory, self-perception, mother's perception perceived by children, and mother's actual perception were measured, and 2 discrepancy scores were calculated. One was a discrepancy score between self perception and mother's perception perceived by children (intra-self discrepancy score) and the other was a discrepancy score between mother's perception perceived by children and mother's actual perception (child-mother discrepancy score). Children's perception of social support from their mothers was negatively correlated with intra-self discrepancy score, and frequency of child-mother conversations on the social characteristics of children was also negatively correlated with child-mother discrepancy score and intra-self discrepancy score. These results supported the hypothesis about the social process, through which a child's self-perception was constructed, and a significance of social relationships was suggested.