Current Trends in Studies of Behavioral Development in Japan

要旨

Japanese have had strong concern on child rearing and socialization since ancient years. Earlier publications on those topics date back to around 1400 AD. But scientific studies of behavior development belong to modern years, and it was after 1950 that the studies of psychological development have become prominent. Especially during the last 20 years, the number of studies of behavior development reported at psychology conventions increased rapidly, and during the period of 1976-1980, the behavior development studies account for more than one fifth of all psychology papers. Among them, the number of studies of personality development is the largest, followed by that of studies of cognitive development. Works on language development are also increasing in recent years, gaining their share in terms of percentage against the total number of behavior development studies. The method of research most frequently used is experimental, accounting for more than half of reported studies. Some research topics which are attracting attention are exemplified by recently conducted studies, which include language acquisition, "Kanji" as cognitive tool, mother-child interaction and cross-cultural studies.

主題