We examined the relationship between morphological awareness and word reading skills in syllabic Hiragana and morphographic Kanji. Participants were 127 Grade 1 Japanese-speaking children who were followed until Grade 2. The results showed that Grade 1 morphological awareness was uniquely and comparably associated with word reading skills in both…

The development of metalinguistic awareness for linguistic politeness was examined in 68 Japanese-speaking children aged between three and five years old. A politeness judgement task was administered together with several phonological judgement tasks and false-belief tasks. Four- and five-year old Japanese children, but not three-year-olds, made…

Data from the Japanese standardization of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale for Intelligence were used to analyze the structure of abilities of Japanese children in terms of the Burt-Vernon hierarchical model of intelligence. It was suggested that the pattern of cognitive strengths and weaknesses that emerged would help clarify a number of…