Among children diagnosed as language retarded or mentally retarded, there is a group of children showing communicative behaviours: lack of responsiveness to speech spoken to them by other people and reluctance in using speech as a communication tool. It is worth investigating such communication behaviours in these children in clarifying the nature of their developmental defect and in finding an effective therapeutic approach toward them.
The first speaker, Oishi, investigated pre-linguistic behaviours of 6 children showing the above mentioned communicative behaviours and he found that their pointing beheviour showed a differentvelopmental feature from that of normal children. Oishi proposed that their lack of responsiveness to other peoples speech may have as an underground factor a delay in acquisition of symbolic function in contrast to a relatively good development of concrete concepts such as acquiring object names.
The second speaker, Ishida, gave a case report of a seven year-old girl who had the same communicative behavious in her earlier years. Although the child acquired her ocabulary with ease, she had difficulty in understanding meanings of the questio ns asked her and in learning an appropriate way to respond to each question. She learned to answer questions when she was given a framework in which questions and answers were organized or when she was given a visual example. Ishida proposed that the manipulation. Stiee further questions were raised where a causative factor of lack of responsiveness would be restricted to cognitive disorder, and the child's lack of responsiveness may be due to the difficulty the child had in acquiring and selecting the necessary framework within which she was supposed to answer.
The third speaker, Kondo, gave a report of twoautistic chil dren who showed a strong tendency to hane ignored speeches spoken to them in their early years. Their language development was characterized by a deficient ability to understand sentences, inability to be attentive to what was spoken to them, and inability to derstand what was spoken to them. Kondo suggested that their lack of responsivenessmay have as an underground factor a lack of interest towards people and some kind of cognitive disorder.
The discussant, Nagahata, made remarks on each speaker. To Oishi, he raised a question whether lack of responsiveness seen in her cases would be bue to linguistic imcompetence or inattentiveness toward other people's speech. To Ishida, he pointed the similarity between her case and the semantic pragmatic syndrome and discussed a functional disorder Ishida's case might have. To Kondo, he questioned the Kind of defect in her cases giving an impressin of queerness.
During this symposium, it was suggested by various people including comments from the floor that lack of responsiveness would be closely. related to a cognitive deficit on level of, symbol formation and kind of peiceptual disorders being thought of as a, causative factor.
