While there has been increasing interest in language development in children and adolescents with Down's Syndrome, the research in Japan, especially during the last fifteen years, has not been summarized and analyzed concerning deviancies in their language development and communication. Analysis of recent research in the field indicates that the following five points are well supported by the research. 1) While the response of children with Down's syndrome to others is weak, there is no evidence of deviance in their communication during the pre-linguistic period. 2) The prevalence of inconsistent articulation errors is leading researchers to believe that children with Down's syndrome may have neural disorders in areas such as articulation programming and auditory processing. 3) The development of syntax lags behind their MA and MLU, while growth in their lexicon is faster than that of syntax. 4) It seems that various types exist in terms of speech and language development among children and adolescents with Down's syndrome. 5) The use of sign language has been shown to help promote language acquisition.

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This study examines the relation between the interpersonal rhythm of conversation established between a college student and a person with severe intellectual disabilities (CA21) and the college student's subjective evaluation of the conversation. Presented here is analysis of three of thirteen conversations between the two which examines the relation of 1) an acoustic analysis of the non-linguistic use of the voice (the time series pattern), 2) an analysis of transcriptions of the conversations, and 3) an analysis of student's evaluation. The student's subjective evaluation indicated that the conversation became smoother and empathy increased as time passed. This subjective evaluation corresponded to a detailed analysis of the speed of the conversation and the length of pauses before speakers replied to each other. This analysis showed that an adjustment in the rhythm of conversation between the speakers occurred in about ten minutes. Moreover, this adjustment occurred even in cases where there was no mastery of linguistic contents and forms and no increasing rise in the frequency of establishing an interpersonal rhythm.

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This study reports on a course of speech therapy conducted for a seven-year-old boy with severe stuttering which began to develop at the age of four years, six months. With the participation of his mother, the therapy was conducted through controlling his environment and introducing play as an important part of the therapy. In the play portion of the therapy he was encouraged to speak slowly, rhythmically, softly, and in a relaxed manner by likening such behavior to that of the movement of animals. As a result of this process of speech therapy, his stuttering improved remarkably over the course of a year.

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This paper reports on the results of a survey of speech-language-hearing therapists working at long-term care facilities for the elderly. The responses to the questionnaire by fifty-four STs indicated the following problems: 1) the lack of formal guidelines for ST services, 2) delays in developing effective management techniques, 3) uncertainties regarding the role of STs, and 4) the low awareness of the role of STs by other specialists. This study suggests that professional organizations need to supply support services and systems for this newly developing group of STs, most of whom are young and have limited professional experience.

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This paper presents an argument that key aspects of the communication disorders in children with high-functioning pervasive developmental disorders are pragmatic in nature. Speech and language therapy for children with autistic disturbances or pervasive developmental disorders has a long history. In the past, intensive speech and language therapy was performed as the central treatment in the case of autism. As with other developmental disorders, such treatment in the case of autism is now conducted as part of a treatment for improving all aspects of communication. Though conventional articulation and word understanding training are important, it is now widely accepted that pragmatic disorders are at the core of language disorders in autism. It now seems that if speech and language therapy for children with autistic disturbances cannot improve pragmatic abilities, then they cannot form a comprehensive treatment for improving the communication abilities of autistic children. Consequently, new developments in speech and language therapy for autistic children which incorporate training in the pragmitic aspects of language usage can be expected.

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This paper reports on a study of how one-switch computer operating aids we have developed might provide an alternative input method for the severely physical impaired. Because we have relied on changes in skin potentials triggered by character recognition to serve as the signal to activate the switch, the new input method does not require physical movement. In the skin potentials recorded from the right palms of four normal subjects during a letter matching task, sympathetic skin responses (SSR) were observed when the subjects recognized a target character. The mean appearance rate of SSR with character recognition was 63% in the four subjects. The use of changes in skin potentials such as SSR to trigger the one-switch system has a number of advantages, such as not requiring extensive training, in comparison to Brain Computer Interface by means of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. There are, however, still problems to solve, such as the low rate of occurrence of SSR, in making this technique fully practical.

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Music therapy is a broad field which can be applied in a variety of areas including medical treatment, social welfare, education, daily life, health programs, and local activities of various sorts. Accordingly, there are a wide variety of techniques and methods applicable to people with various needs. The present study focuses on how music therapy can be used to help children with delayed language abilities and reports, in particular, on how music therapy was used to encourage new modes of behavior in a boy diagnosed with mental retardation accompanied by autism. Discussed here are the types of music activities used, how they were used to develop a relationship with the boy, and how they helped develop the boy's communication abilities and relations with people.

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Following an overview of sandplay therapy as a technique of psychotherapy, this paper reports on three clinical case studies using sandplay with: 1) a kindergarten boy who had the language problems of mutism and stuttering, 2) an elementary school boy whose main problem was a type of developmental disability, and 3) a high school boy who was refusing to attend school. Especially in the second and third cases, the mandala-like designs created were particularly worthy of notice. This is because such images can be taken as symbolic expressions of the self. In sandplay therapy, these are important images whose expression is connected with mental growth and development.

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