Abstract
Daily physical activities for 12 severely physically and mentally handicapped persons were investigated using heart rates during a 24-hr period. The recorded heart rates were processed statistically and analyzed. The standard deviation and skewness for the severely handicapped persons with low ambulatory ability were significantly greater than those for the most severely handicapped persons without ambulatory ability. These properties confirmed that physical activities of daily living were extremely different for the two groups. The severely handicapped persons with low ambulatory ability had higher heart rates of about 10% relating to active physical activities. It was suggested that the active physical activities of daily living could contribute to the improvement of physical work capacity if these activities were more prolonged in duration. On the other hand, such higher heart rates were not observed in the case of most severely handicapped persons and extremely low function in their cardiorespiratory system was suspected. It became impor. tant to apply physical training to the most severely handicapped persons even though light work was performed passively.
