Research on playground design in Japan and England offers challenges to the logic behind how playgrounds in the United States are designed. This paper presents observations of outdoor environments for children and youth in Japan and England where the space is not only useful and safe but also contributes to learning and play that reflects the…

The study was designed to investigate the learning processes in discrimination shift learning, in terms of developmental views of "logical manipulation by classification." Tasks comparing sizes of intradimensional value-classes and comparing sizes of interdimensional value-classes were devised in order to measure subjects' levels of…

The study discusses an intervention program for three young Down's syndrome children who had shown communication problems with other children. A game situation was developed in which the Japanese children interacted among themselves and with adults. Rules were designed to provide a structured context for the game, and the rules were kept within…

The study sought to examine developmental processes of substitution in the pretend play of Down's syndrome children and to clarify the onset mechanism of subskills in decontextualization, which refers to the progress from imitation to substitution and then to invention. Eighteen Japanese children, aged 29-55 months, with Down's syndrome were given…

This study examined the functions of structured modeling and mother-child play settings upon the development of pretend actions in young Down Syndrome children. Subjects were 30 pairs of Japanese children, with a developmental age range of 12-35 months, and their mothers. The children were individually administered five phases of premodeling,…

Japanese children are socialized to internalize parental, group, and institutional norms. Japanese adults believe "good" children to be sunao (cooperative). Sunao is difficult to translate into English, but can be thought of as being gentle and spirited. This paper presents a study that examined and described feelings and thoughts of…

A 3-years-and-11-months-old Japanese girl showed delayed language development and emotional disturbance and was believed to suffer from maternal deprivation. A treatment program was developed consisting of three kinds of therapy: (1) nondirective play therapy; (2) language training; and (3) counseling for the mother. The language training involved…

This curriculum unit consists of a series of lesson plans focused on Japan for preschool students ages 3 to 5 years. The unit has five themes: (1) geography; (2) language; (3) people and clothing; (4) customs; and (5) food. Each theme has from four to eight activity lessons which address different developmental domains, including language, social…

This study investigated the effectiveness of a natural environment language training procedure that combined the mand-model procedure and the time delay procedure for the acquisition of noun signs and for the spontaneous use of the signs acquired. One autistic boy, aged 5 years, 4 months with no verbal imitation skills and few movement imitation…