重症心身障害者の応答性に及ぼす「ゆらし」刺激の効果

抄録

Many profoundly retarded persons (PRs) show weak responsive behaviors to auditory and visual stimuli. The present study aimed to examine activating effects of vestibular-proprioceptive stimulus which influence responses of PRs to the calls of subject's name. Subjects were 19 PRs (CA, 2 : 9-22 : 11, DA, 0 : 2-1 : 5). As a vestibular-proprioceptive stimulus, the eccentric pendular rotating movement was used (Fig. 1). According to the appearance of eye movements during the rotation of the head, PRs were classified into 4 groups (Fig. 3); 5 PRs who showed compensatory eye movement (Group I), 2 PRs who showed transient eye movement (Group II), 7 PRs who did not show any relationship between eye movements and head positions (Group III), and 5 PRs with no eye movement (Group IV). In 5 out of 7 subjects of Groups I and II, behaviors of turning head as well as smiling toward the source of calling names were observed clearly after vestibular-proprioceptive stimulation (Fig. 5). It was pointed out that a vestibular-proprioceptive stimulus has some effect which activates orienting and exploring responses in PRs.