In many studies it was demonstrated that the cerebral palsied children had poor perforemance on the figure perception in comparing with normal children. This was partly because of their behavioral characteristics such as "distractibility" (external distraction of figure-background perception). This study was intended to examine the effects of the external stimuli on the figure perception relating to the following points. 1) Are there differential effects of external stimuli among spastic, athetotic and normal children? 2) What effects will be brought about due to changing conditions of the external stimuli? 3) Do the external stimuli decrease their distracting effects in accordanance with presenting them repeatedly? Furthermore, the relationship between external distraction of attention and disorder of figure-background perception was discussed. Those points were examined in the Experiment I with single-figure perception and in the Experiment II with figure-background perception. Method Subjects were 30 normal, 30 athetotic and 30 spastic children. Figure stimuli were 24 single-figure stimuli selected from Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, and 14 figure-background stimuli overlapped with geometric figure. The external stimuli were 8 small lamps set on the outside edges of the screen. They were presented by following conditions; 1) simultaneously with figure stimuli, 2) starting to light a little before presenting the figure stimuli (.125 sec. in single-figure perception; .25 sec. in figure-background perception), 3) starting to light a long before presenting the figure stimuli (.25 sec. in single-figure perception; .5 sec. figure-background perception). Result and discussion 1) Cerebral palsied children made higher distracting error ratio than normal children both in the single-figure perception and the figure-background perception. It was suggested that the distracting effects would be related with orienting reflex to the external stimuli. 2) When the external stimuli were started to present a long before the figure stimuli, ther was no distracting effects. It was suggested that the foreperiods of the external stimuli might come into action of signaling stimuli. 3) It was found that the frequency of distracting errors were decreased in accordance with repetition to the external stimli. This might be due to habituation to the external stimuli. 4) There was no significant difference in the distracting effects between clinical types. But in the figure-background perception, there was significant difference. Therefore, it was suggested that the external distraction of attention and the disorder of figure-background perception were mutually independent ones.

View full abstract

This paper presents new method of measuring comprehension of sentences, which we can easily use in the speech therapy. In the experiment, Ss listened to a sentence and repeated it immediately as it was presented. The test sentences were 15 Japanese sentences which consisted of the words which primary school children have known, and their characters were specified by the number of words and the phrase structure. Our basic assumption was that sentences were not merely strings of words, but structured strings of words consisting of hierarchies of units which paired with concept. So we represented the structure by means of the tree diagram according to the phrase structure rule which we modified the rule made by the transformationalists. We assumed that when one recalled the sentences, sentences were coded by secondary memory using rules corresponded with his phrase structure rule. Thus we thought that the recall scores of sentences related to the comprehension of sentences. There were two groups of the subjects, one of 14 language retarded children, and the other of 8 normal children, both aged from 7 to 11. The recall score was analyzed in terms of sentence meaning and its structure. For phrase structure, these results showed that the recall scores of normal Ss were gradually decreased as the compleixity of phrase structure. We thought that the more complicated the sentences become, the more rules one must use to recall a sentence. On the other hand, the scores of the retarded Ss suddenly decreased at the sentences which had more complicated structures. This meant that the language retarded children did not have the rules to comprehend complicated sentences. For the number of words, the recall scores of both groups decreased as a function of the number of words increases. We thought it was true because the recall scores of a sentence related to the number of items when we neglected its structure. We concluded that there were two problems in this experiment; one was the methodological problem for measuring the comprehension of sentences, the other was the problem which concerned with stimulus items. From the results, we could say that the comprehension of sentences related to not only the number of words but also the phrase structures of sentences, and the sentence recall of normal Ss was significantly superior to that of retarded Ss. From this point, it was clear that we could estimated the comprehension of speech by the sentence recall method, and the number of words and the phrase structures of sentences could be used as the parameters of the complication of sentences. This study is one of the primary experiments for the method of measuring comprehension of sentences for the speech therapy.

View full abstract

To show the regeneration process of speech of a 9-year-old autistic boy with mental retardation and epilepsy from the developmental point of view is the purpose of this paper. The records of his speech, talken during a 50-minute play therapy once a week for about two years, are detailed and analyzed. The main observations are as follows: (1) The amount of speech and the articulation score fluctuate irregularly from day to day. The regeneration of speech, however, goes slowly with some aspects of the normal speech development on the whole. (2) As he grows older, the lengthening of the sentence in his speech goes slowly in form without enrichment in contents. (3) Reflecting his cognitive deviation, the lengthening of the sentence progresses only in the specific topics such as eating and rarely comes up to other subjects. (4) Though he is over 11-years old, the passive reply and the soliloquy which is often designative or incomprehensive are dominant in his speech. (5) Some developmental changes are observed even in the soliloquy, the echolalia and the language imitation. (6) Some autistic speech disorders, such as no calling one's name, the language poor in vocabulary on the matters of general interest, the repetition of phrases, the whisper and so on, still remain in his speech. (7) Lack of linguistic functions such as assertion, possession, calling, displaying, inviting, admiring, consoling. proposing, permitting, instructing, speaking for an other person is the characteristics of his speech. On the contrary, those of appealing, greeting, explanation, imitation and request are now developing in his speech. (8) The functional level of his speech is somewhat similar to that of a 20-22-month-old boy.

View full abstract

There are great difficulties and many problems which have not been fully solved yet in assessing psychologically cerebral palsied (cp) children correctly. It is because they have various disorders (i. e. sensory, perceptual, behabioral or expressive, etc.) as well as motor handicap. So, this research was designed to examine (1) the degree of validity of appling such standardized intelligence test as WISC to CP children and (2) the developmental change of their intelligence. The londitudinal data of WISC applied in a Special School for the crippled were used for these purposes. All the subjects were the pupils of this school. The subjects consisted of the three following groups. 1) Group I consisted of 81 CP children (46 males and 35 females) to whom WISC had been applied in the first and the fourth grade of the primary department of the school. 2) Grbmp II consisted of 53 CP children (26 males and 27 females) to whom WISC had been applied in the fourth and the sixth grade of the primary department. 3) Group III consisted of 53 CP children (31 males and 22 females) to whom WISC had been applied in the sixth grade of the primary department and the third grade of the lower secondary department. In this way the longitudinal data were obtained four times (i. e. the first, fourth and sixth grade of the primary school and the third grade of the lower secondary school) for nine years. Each measured score was compared and correlated with the scores of its neighbouring times. By comparing the data, the following results were obtained. 1) Between any two neighbouring times of assessment, all the measured scores had very high correlations. Almost all rs obtained from IQ scores were over 0.80, especially in the group III all rs were over 0.90 and about S. S. scores, rs were between 0.58 (group I) and 0.80 (group III) on the average. By these facts, it was cleared that WISC had high stability (reliability) for CP children, also. But, can we regard these high correlations only as indexes of high validity? The author considers that we have to discuss the validity of the test from as many aspects as possible, such as the situations and the purposes of the test as well as the way of utilizing the results, the viewpoints of the persons concerned to the test and the atti tude of the children on the test situations,etc. Here, we can point out only one factthat WISC has high reliability for CP children. 2) It became clear that the measured intelligence scores of CP children show a remarkable change both qualitatively and quantitatively. In other words, the measured intelligence scores show most sudden upward change between the first and the fourth grade of the primary school, then reach the plateau, and slight decrease is observed between the sixth grade of the primary scool and the third grade of the lower secondary school. Discussing these developmental changes, we must discriminate two factors, which are (1) the improvement of the test situations, and (2) the developmental change of the intelligence. Throughout the test situations, we observe improvement and development of emotion and social matugity as well as those of intelligence. These developments seem to derive from the effect of school education and group life in the early period. Then, the author considers that the development of the intelligence means "catching phenomenon" to the norm of the general population. Our data also show that remarkable improvement is expected before the children become about ten years old, as many other studies do. we also paied attention to the change of intelligence profile. In the first grade profile, several partial collapses are conspicuous in such as "Information" "Arithmetic" "Vocabulary" and "Maze" etc. These collapses seem to result from the deficiency of learning and experience, for these collapses soon recovered at latest in the fourth grade profile.

View full abstract

The present paper was investigated in order to clarify the structure and the contents of the self-consciousness of the children with progressive muscular dystrophy from the view-point of physical and social aspects. The subjects were all boys with progressive muscular dystrophy (the dystrophied chidren) under medical treatment in some sanatoriums. Their intelligence was above borderline and the range of their age was from fifth grade of elementary school to high school age level. The self-rating inventory and the Sentence Completion Test (SCT) were employed as method. This inventory consisted of 11 items on physical self and 29 items on social self, including lie scale (4 items). Items on social self were on interpersonal relationship which consisted of 4 sub-categories; family, friend, teacher, and hospital staff. The subjects were asked to give themselves three sets of self ratings every item; present self, past self, and ideal self. The contents of SCT were corresponded to the disease and the above 4 sub-categories. The results were as follows. There was significant difference on the physical self-consciousness between the dystrophied children and the physically health children, but not between the dystrophied and the cerebral palsied children. The dytrophied children had negative consciousness on their present physiques and positive orientation of ideal self. Those tendencies got remarkable with adding their age. The social self-consciousness of the dystrophied children was not significantly different from both the physically health children and the cerebral palsied children. The dystrophied children had variant consciousness for the other persons. While they had positive consciousness for their family, they had negative consciousness for their teacher and hospital staff whom they closely depended on.

View full abstract