Fumiko Matsuda

Development of concepts of interrelationships among duration, distance, and speed

The main purpose of this study was to clarify the developmental processes of understanding of interrelationships among the three concepts, duration, distance, and speed. In Experiment 1, ” ve developmental phases were found based on data of 222 four- to eleven-year-old children. In the ” rst phase, children displayed an implicit understanding of the direct relationships between duration and distance, and between distance and speed. This phase was most common among 4-year-olds. Second, children occasionally understood the inverse relation between duration and speed. Third, all of the two direct relations and the inverse relation were almost correctly understood, although the third dimension was still rather ignored. Fourth, children made their judgements based on the duration-distance-speed system, but were not fully conscious of it. Finally, children judged consciously based on this system. About half of the 11-year-olds reached this phase. In Experiment 2, 29 children repeatedly participated in the same experiment six or eight times once a year till 6th grade. Generally, their understanding developed along the process that emerged in Experiment 1, although there was facilitation of a transfer from the coordination of two-by-two relations to the duration-distance-speed system. Theoretical and educational implications of these ” ndings were discussed.

Effects of generalized self-efficacy and negative social comparison feedback on specific self-efficacy and performance.

The effects of social comparison feedback on specific self-efficacy and performance of high generalized self-efficacy participants and low generalized self-efficacy participants were examined with the help of 20 participants with high generalized self-efficacy and 20 participants with low generalized self-efficacy. Half of the participants in each generalized self-efficacy group received negative social comparison feedback after each of four trials of an experimental task while the other half received no feedback. Two kinds of specific self-efficacy—performance-based and normative-based—were measured once before the task and four times after the trials of the task. After the task, the High generalized self-efficacy/Feedback group rated performance-based specific self-efficacy higher and performed better than the Low generalized self-efficacy/Feedback group. No significant difference was observed between the High generalized self-efficacy/No feedback group and Low generalized self-efficacy/No feedback group. There were no significant effects with regard to normative-based specific self-efficacy.

Concepts about Interrelations among Duration, Distance, and Speed in Young Children

The main purpose of the present study was to clarify the developmental processes of the awareness of relations between duration, distance, and speed relative to linear movement, using a set of equivalent tasks for the three concepts. The participants were 84 children aged from 4 years 0 months to 6 years 11 months. In the initial phase, children were approaching awareness of the direct relations between duration and distance, and distance and speed. Subsequent to this initial phase, children began to be aware of the inverse relation between duration and speed. However, this developmental direction was not completely monotonic. That is: (1) a completely correct grasp of the two direct relations seemed to strengthen an incorrect grasp of the relation between duration and speed as direct; and (2) incorrect answers regarding the two relations as inverse seemed to appear a little more often when the inverse relation between duration and speed began to be sometimes correctly grasped. Finally, children were almost fully aware of the two direct relations and the one inverse relation. However, even in this state, children seemed to judge intuitively and not based on the duration-distance-speed system but based on the co-ordination of two by two relations.

Effects of attention and external stimuli on duration estimation under aprospective paradigm

The study examined whether there are two independent cognitive factors affecting duration estimation. In two experiments, we manipulated simultaneously and independently two variables, namely, the level of attention to the lapse of time and the quantity of perceived changes, and examined their effects on duration estimation under a prospective paradigm. The duration was estimated to be longer when subjects attended to the lapse of time than when they attended to tasks during the target interval (Experiments 1 and 2). The characteristics of external stimuli irrelevant to the tasks, namely, the rate of presentation of sounds (Experiment 1) and the velocity of moving dots (Experiment 2), affected duration estimation, even though the attention level was little changed by these stimuli. These findings suggest that there are at least two independent cognitive factors that affect duration estimation.

Preschoolers' knowledge about strategies in coping with other's disgust evoked by immoral actions.

40 preschoolers in Exp. 1 and 22 in Exp. 2 (mean ages were both 5:11) were shown short stories presented as colored videotaped pictures with explanatory narrations. In each story a recipient felt disgusted by an agents action. In Exp. 1 the agents action was immoral. The participants were asked to tell how the agent would behave, supposing they were the agent themselves. About 80% of their answers were prosocial. In Exp. 2, two kinds of story were shown. In one, the agent hurt the recipient intentionally; in the other, by accident. Almost all answers in both kinds of story were prosocial. Furthermore, over a third of the participants told the reasons for their answers, considering the recipients emotion, even when the agents action was intentional and immoral. These findings show that the preschoolers had suitable knowledge about the agents strategies in coping with the recipients disgust.

THE TAU AND ANTI-TAU EFFECTS IN SUCCESSIVELY PRESENTED STIMULI

It was confirmed by the reproduction method with 20 adults that (a) the tau effect, i.e., the greater the temporal separation between successively presented stimuli with a constant spatial interval, the greater the apparent spatial interval, occurred, especially in the situation in which the participants were assumed to form a set easily using temporal interval as the cue for spatial interval estimation, and (b) the anti-tau effect occurred in the special situation in which the participants were assumed to form a set using speed of an imaginary movement as the cue for it. These findings supported the hypothesis of “cue-selection sets.”

Contribution of stimulus attributes to errors in duration and distance judgments--a developmental study.

In Matsudas 1996 study, 4- to 11-yr.-old children (N=133) watched two cars running on two parallel tracks on a CRT display and judged whether their durations and distances were equal and, if not, which was larger. In the present paper, the relative contributions of the four critical stimulus attributes (whether temporal starting points, temporal stopping points, spatial starting points, and spatial stopping points were the same or different between two cars) to the production of errors were quantitatively estimated based on the data for rates of errors obtained by Matsuda. The present analyses made it possible not only to understand numerically the findings about qualitative characteristics of the critical attributes described by Matsuda, but also to add more detailed findings about them.

ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHIC STUDIES OF TIME ESTIMATION PART III: EFFECT OF FREQUENCY OF FLICKERING LIGHT ON TIME ESTIMATION

SUMMARY