幼児のイメージ発達に関する縦断的研究

The purpose of this study is to know, by means of Rorschach tests given longitudinally, how images develop in infants and the implications thereof for nurturing infants. The following are the results in summary of the tests given, respectively, to the first-year children in a three-yearsystem kindergarten in 1980 and the same-year children in the same kindergarten in 1981, totaling forty children, whose average age at the time of testing was three years and seven months.<BR>1) What characterize those infants' images, as they are observed through a formal analysis of the infants' Rorschach responses, are their non-plentifulness in production, fixedness, instability owing to the infants' underdifferentiated perception, bodily representation 'accompanied by verbalization (in the case of motor images), and impulsive expression of emotion stimulated by colors.These characteristics are mostly in accord with those suggested by many researchers, and this indicates universality in the image development in infants.<BR>2) The images characteristic of those infants, as they are observed through a content analysis, are such that are influenced strongly by the modern 'information-oriented society' and 'scientific and technological age.' Thus, monstrous beasts and airplanes are abundantly imaged, while other natural objects, such as quadrupeds and plants, are not imaged so frequently as they were in L.B. Ames's studies in the 1952's.<BR>3) These observations seem to have some important implications for the nurture of infants.