The present study aims at elaborating the methods to reduce feeding with fingers and to shape appropriat espoon-using behavior of an institutionalized profoundly mentally retarded boy by applying the operant behavior modification techniques. The boy was 9 years and one month old when the study was initiated. His measured intelligence level was untestable and estimated to be profoundly retarded according to AAMD classification system. He did not speak, could not follow instructions, or did not perform any self-help skill without attendants' aid. He scarcely responded to environmental stimulus, and presented self-stimulative behaviors. He could seldom use a spoon, spilled food on himself and his surroundings, and often displayed grosslyal improper mealtime behaviors such as stealing food from other residents, eating food previously spilled on the chair, the floor, etc. The training was carried out in a training room through the 47 training sessions. These sessions were divided into (1) the baseline period (5 sessions), (2) the first training period (10), (3) the second training period (20), and (4) the third training period (12). During the first training period, the trainer guided the boy's hand manually through the eating sequence and reduced the degree of guidance as the boy improved according to the 5 steps (manual guidane). This was the period for promoting appearance of the target behavior. During the second training period, verbal castigation "Dame" which ment "No", and the tray removal (timeout) for 15 sec. were given to him contingently whenever feeding with fingers occured. This was the period for fixing the high occurence rate of the target behavior in his repertoire of theeating behavior. During the third training period, throwing away utensils and food were added to the objects for the timeout procedure. Verbal approval "Jyozune" which ment "Fine", and patting on his head were following every two spoon-using responses during the training periods. The results are as follows: 1) Though the target behavior was appeared as soon as the manual guidance was introduced, its spontaneous occurence tended to decrease during the first training period (See Fig. 1). 2) The abrupt decrease of feeding with fingers and the abrupt increase of the target behavior were shown after applying the timeout procedure during the second training period (See Fig. 1 and 2). 3) Temporarily the training procedures produced an increase in the rate of the boy's throwing away utensils and food, which were considered to be negative side effects emergedin the training, but they decreased to previous level after they were added to the target for the timeout procedure during the thind training period (See Fig. 3). According to these results, it was discussed as follows: 1) Though manual guidance is a effective method for shaping appropriate responses, it is weak in maintaining those responses. To maintain appropriate eating responses, it is considered to be necessary to deliver negative reinforcement for inappropropriate responses and positive reinforcement for appropriate responses. 2) Through this training, the boy begins to engage in contact with the trainer and to ask for relating each other in other social situations as well. It is considered to be possible that this training is a good chance to accelerate his development.

View full abstract

The two forms of Adaptive Behavior Scales developed by Nihira et al. were translated into Japanese with slight modifications by these authors and published for the general use in Japan in 1973. The one of these forms is for children under 12 years of age, and the other is for adults over 13 years of age. The scales have two parts. The Part I is to measure the functional aspects of adaptive behavior and the Past II is to assess the aspects of maladaptive behavior of the retarded. There are 27 subdomains or groups of items on various aspects of adaptive behavior in the Part I and 13 domains or groups of items on various aspects of maladaptive behavior in the Part II. For standardizing these scales in Japan, ratings for 6092 retarded persons (1971 children and 4121 adults) were collected from almost all over the country. The most of these retarded persons were cared and trained in the residential institutions. To uncover the structure of the adaptive and/or maladaptive behavior of the retarded, a factor-analytic study is carried out separately on these ratings for each age group. In these attempts, the productmoment correlation coeficients among 27 subdomains in Part I and among 13 domains in Part II of the scales were calculated (See Table 1 for Part I and Table 6 for Part II ). On these correlation matrices, factor analyses were performed by use of the complete centroid method, and then the revealed factor matrices were rotated toward varimax criterion. Main findings are: (1) As the result of analyses in part I, three psychologically significant factors were disclosed after varimax rotation (See Table 4 & 5). These factors were tentatively named as "Factor of Personal Independence", "Factor of Social Adjustment" and "Factor of Personal and Social Responsibility". Factor of Personal Independence was defined by such subdomains as "Eating Skills", "Care of Clothing", "Dressing and Undressing" and "Motor Development". Factor of Social Adjustment was defined by such subdomains as "Locomotion", "General Independent Functioning -exactly speaking, half of weights in this subdomain is attributed to skills of telephone usage-", "Money Handling and Budgeting", "Shopping Skills," "Speaking and Writing", "Comprehension", "General Language Development," "Number and Time concept" and "Kitchene Duties". Factor of Personal and Social Responsibility was defined by such subdomains as "Initiative", "Persistence," "Self-Direction (General)," "Responsibility" and "Socialization". The largest contribution was manifested on the "Factor of Personal Indepence" for children and on the "Factor of Social Adjustment" for adults, while the characteristics of factor matrices were apparently common to these two separate age groups. This difference is interesting and motivating us for further analyses of these data in details. The summary of the analyses will be reported in our next article. (2) As the result of analysis in Part II, three considerably significant factors common to two separate age groups were revealed after varimax rotation as well (See Table 9 & 10). They were named as "Factor of Antisocial-Aggressive Behavior", "Self-Stimulative Behavior" and "Factor of Deficits in Interpersonal Behavior". Factor of Antisocial-Aggressive Behavior was defined by such domains as "Violent and Destructive Behavior", "Anti-Social Behavior", "Rebellious Behavior" and "Psychological Disturbances". Factor of Self-Stimulative Behavior was defined by such domains as "Stereotyped Behavior and Odd Mannerisms", "Unacceptable or Eccentric Habits", "Self-Abusive Behavior" and "Sexuall

(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)

View full abstract

The present experiments were designed to investigate the effects of attention to the stimulus dimension upon the discrimination learnig in the normals and the rstardates of same M A. The Ss were 43 retardates with a mean MA of 6 years and 3 months and 42 normals with a mean MA of 6 years and 6 months. They were measured their dimensional preference. 37 of retardates were the color-preferred Ss and 31 of normals were the f he form-preferred Ss. After being measured their dimensional preference, the Ss were trained on the discrimination task. The criterion of attainment for discrimination learning was 5 consecutive correct responses and testing was terminated after 40 trials for S who did not reach this criterion. In the first experiment, the discriminaion task consisted of form (circle and square) and color (red and blue) dimensions, and the preferred dimension was either relevant (Group 1) or irrelevant (Group 2) to solution. The results were as follws (1) If the preferred dimension was relevant, the learningw as facilitated; if the preferred dimension was irrelevant, the learning was slow. (2) When the preferred dimension was relevant, the retardates learned as fast as the than normals. But But when the preferred dimension was irrelevant, the retardates learned slower the normals. In the second experiment, the discrimination task consisted of color (red and blue) or form (circle and square) dimension and erred dimension was relevant (Group 3). The results were as follows. (1) The Ss in Group 3 learned as fast as the Ss in Group 1. (2) There was no significant difference between the retardates and the normals. In the third experiment, before the discrimination task was started to train the Ss were directed their attention to the nonpreferred dimension by the experimenter (Group 4). The results were as follows. (1) The normal Ss in Group 4 learned faster than the normal Ss in Group 2. (2) But, the retarded Ss in Group 4 learned as fast as the retarded Ss in Group 2.

View full abstract

The present study aimed at investigating how the congenitally sensory neural deaf children differ from the hearing children developmentally in the cognitive processes and how deafness influences their symbolic functions. The author gave the deaf children and the hearing children the classificatory tasks and studied the process of their perception and cognition. Ss were consisted of the experiment group (108 deaf: MA>CA) and the control group(82 hearing: MA>CA). In each group, the age of the children was 4 to 7 years old. They were matched according to the mental age level and schooling. The mean hearing loss of the deaf children was 87.0 dB at 500 HZ, 91. 6 dB at 1000HZ, 93. 1 dB at 2000 HZ and 96. 1 dB at 4000HZ. The experimental materials were consisted of 12 items. Each item contained either 2 or 3 dimensions and had each value. The material was a figure-matrix, consisting of geometric figures and object figures, which were considered to be familiar to the children. Ss were asked to seethree figures drawn as the stimulus-figure and to perceive the commonness in them and also to make a matrix-structure after they grasp the relation among them. They were encouraged to do it in succession, -maximum trials was 7-till they had signals to stop. The results and consideration were as follows: (1) The increase of score with the age level was significant (p<0.01) for both deaf children and hearing children. Hearing children showed the performance of paradoxical decrease phenomenon in between 6:0 and 6:5. In these age level, they converted the perceptual response form to concceptural response form. However, deaf children did not show any overt developmental paradoxical decrease phenomenon. (2) Deaf children classified the tasks by perceptual and graphic configuration after they reach the age about 4:6. They gained the scores by differentiation of perception and then converted this perceptual response form to classification based on conceptual cues. They had the perceptual respons forms between 6:6-6:11 dominantly. The convertion of this dominancy was attained between 7:0-7:5 age level. (3) The developmental pattern of deaf children in the formation of inner symbolic habits differed from that of hearing children. It seems that they developed their own enactive and iconic representation. (4) The number of attribute (dimension) seems to have aconsiderable influence on the performance of deaf childrens' conceptual tasks but not so much on their performance of their perceptual tasks.

View full abstract

The auditory intelligibility of the distorted monosyllables and words were studied in normal children and mentally retarded. Four conditions of the distortion were expansion (×1.5,×2 and×3) and compression (×0.7,×0.5 and×0.25) of frequency components and time ones, respectively. The normal subjects were 160 children aged 4 to 11 years to have 10 subjects in each age-sex, half boys and half girls, and 10 young adults. The mentally retarded subjects were 97 children aged 6 to 17 years. Their mental age ranged from 3 to 12 years and their IQs were from 31 to 77. The results were as follows: 1) Frequency-expanded and-compressed materials In general, the greater the rate of expansion and compression, the poorer the intelligibility became in both normal children and the mentally retarded. When the age advanced the intelligibility improved up to a certain limit in normal children. Especially, it was found the significant difference in the intelligibility scores between 9 and 10 years old. As for the mentally retarded, the curve of the intelligibility scores became similar to the normal children, when the mental age increased. 2) Time-expanded and -compressed materials The intelligibility of all three time-compressed materials were almost eqpual in the normal children and the mentally retarded, compared in the light of mental ages. However, when the rate of the time-expansion became longer, the intelligibility scores improved gradually in the mentally retarded more than the normal children. At the present test, there were no sign ificant differences in intelligibility scores between boys and girls in both normal children and the mentally retarded.

View full abstract