Previous investigations concerning the speecch of retarded children have shown that speech struture, including vocabulary, mean sentence 1 ength, etc., develops with inreasing M.A.. It seems, however, that difficulties exist in applying the results of surveys on speakers of English to those of Japanese, and there has been little investigati concerning the speech of retarded children in Japan. And it has not been made clear whether or not there are any differerences between the speech of retarded children and that of normal children of the same M.A.. The purpose of this study is to find out the characteristics of discourse structure in retarded children by means of analyziag and comparing the speech of retarded children with that of normal children. Method The subjects wers 28 retarded and 31 normal children with M. A. from 6-0 to 7-11 and 30 nomal chilren with M.A. from 8-6 to 9-5. The retarded children were students of a junior high school for retarded children and the normal children were first-grade and third-grade students of a public primary school. The materials which were used to elicit verbal responses were 13 sets of pictures, each containing 4 pictures. Analyses were made of the discourse length, sentence length, number of SETSUZOKU-SHI (conjunctions), number of SETSUZOKU-JOSHI (conjunctive particles), number of SHU-JOSHI (final particles) and of how these features were interrelated with each other. Results and Discussion The main results and discussion are as follows: 1. As to discourse structure, the retarded children were rather similar to the normal children with M.A. from 8-6 to 9-5 than to the normal children with the same M.A. only in the use of SHU-JOSHI. SHU-JOSHI appears to express attitudes or feelings of the speaker and have social factors. It seems that the feature of the use of SHU-JOSHI is different from others. Therefore, the use of SHU-JOSHI is closely related to C.A. than the others. It should be pointed out that this is one of the characteristics of speech with retarded children. 2. The number of sentences spoken by the retarded children was more than that spoken by the normal children of the same M.A.. The number of BUNSETSU and words spoken by the retarded children, however, was less than that spoken by the normal children and the sentence length of the retarded children was shorter than that of the normal children. The number of SETSUZOKU-SHI and SETSUZOKU-JOSHI used by the retarded children was also less than that used by the normal children As a whole, the total amount of information conveyed by the retarded children was considered to be small and their speech development seemed to be retarded, except for the use of SHU-JOSHI. 3. Within each group of the retarded children and the normal children with same M.A., significant correlations were obtained concerning almost each matching of all features excrept for the use of SHU-JOSHI, while no significant correlations were obtained in the normal children with M.A. from 8-6 to 9-5 except between the sentence length and the use of SETSUZOKU-JOSHI. It can be concluded that quantitative analysis is limited in discussing speech development.

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There is necessity for establishing speech audiometry, since a sense of hearing is useful of listening to speech. Speech audiometry has been studied from some points of view. Some reports pointed out that a subject's state of mind has influence upon mishearing at speech audiometry. However, this indication has not been examined. The purpose of this study was to provide for "difficulty in hearing of speech sounds" objectively. This was based on the following view: If "the difficulty in hearing" is provided objectively, it is useful for interpretating information about the performance on subjective speech audiometry minutely. PROCEDURES: Subjects in this study were normal hearing undergraduates. They were asked to write down fifteen monosyllables from hearing by a head phone, which were presented at 50 dB (Condition 1), which were presented at 20 dB (Condition 2-1), which were distorted with 1000Hz Low Pass Filter (Condition 2-2), and which were masked with 1000 Hz Band Noise (Condition 2-3). During the hearing test, simultaneously Plethysmograph was recorded. The relation between the performance on speech audiometry and the variation in pulse wave each condition was examined. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Correct answer percentage was 90%, on Condition 1, 44% on Condition 2-1, 61% on Condition 2-2, and 58% on Condition 2-3. Thus, it was supposed that Condition 1 was a condition easily to hear, and Condition 2-1, 2-2, and 2-3 were conditions difficult to hear respectively. The variation in pulse amplitude was 0.4mm on Condition 1, 0.61 mm on Condition 2-1, 0.52 mm on Condition 2-2, and 0.48 mm on Condition 2-3. Pulse amplitude on the condition difficult to hear was significantly varied (Sign-Rank test, p<0.005). There was a negative relationship between the percent correct percentage and the variation in pulse amplitude: The correlation coefficient was -0.74 in case of Condition 2-1, -0.84 in case of Condition 2-2, and -0.48 in case of Condition 2-3. The higher the percent correct, the less the change in pulse amplitude, and the lower the percent correct, the more the change in pulse amplitude. On the condition difficult to hear, such as Condition 2-1, which was difficult to hear because of feeble speech sounds, Condition 2-2, which was difficult to hear because of filtered speech sounds, and Condition 2-3, which was difficult to hear because of noise masking, the more easily to hear, the less the change in pulse amplitude, and the more difficult to hear, the more the change in pulse amplitude. Therefore, it was believed that the variation in pulse amplitude was the index of "difficulty" in hearing. Many problems to examine, however, were still remained: That is, other provisions for "difficulty" in hearing from a subject's responses, other materials for the hearing test, subjects problem, analyses of pulse wave, and so on.

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Behavior shown by severely mentally retarded childreren may be classified into two categories, i. e. Self-Stimulative Behavior (SSB) and Outer-Directed Behavior (ODB). The former is the kind of behavior directed to their own body like waving hands before eye or body rocking and often observed in the institutionalized severely mentally retarded, and the latter is the kind of behavior directed toward outer world surrounding them. SSB seems to be the behavior whose stimulus and response are completely enclosed within their body. Engaging in this kind of behavior results in the loss of the chance which advances their development of ODB. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the effect of situations in a ward of residentialinstitution for severely mentally retarded children on SSB and ODB, and to specify the type of SSB according to the degree of the effect. Three situations were studied. 1. Free-time in a dayroom where all children of the ward spent with a few maniplatable objects under supervision of one or two attendants. 2. Training-time in which children were intentionally given a kind of edcational care in small group with many sorts of materials fitted to their sbilities. 3. Meal-time. 36 ambulatory, severely and profoundly retarded children were observed employing a check-list by time-sampling method. Results are followings: 1. On the average, the highest occurence of SSB and the lowest occurence of ODB were observed at the free-time in day-room. At the training-time, however, decremment of SSB and increment of ODB were shown. Occurence of SSB and ODB decreased at meal-time. 2. Large individual differences of children in the degree of the effect of these situations on SSB and ODB were found, so 5 groups of children were divided by a cluster analysis. Group 1: The children showed the highest occurenrences of SSB and the lowest occurence of ODB at all three kinds of situations. The SSB in this group were charaterized by especially patterned form including quick movements such as complex hand movements. In the ward, these children retired to the corner and appeared to be withdrawn from the outer world. Group 2: Being dissimilar to group 1, the occurence of SSB decreased at meal-time. Most children of this group tended to be hypoactive and their SSB consisted of self-contact with their own body or gross movements. ODB in this group was scarecely observed but these children reacted to stimulation from other person passively. Group 3: higher occurence of SSB and ODB are observed regardless of the kinds of the situation. Group 4: In this group, transition of the children from free-time to training-time caused their SSB to decrease remarkably in accordance with so much increment of ODB. Group 5: The children in this group showed the lowest occurence of SSB, the occurence of ODB, however, was changed according to the kind of situation. These reults suggest that two types of SSB may be considered as to severely mentally retarded children. The first type of SSB, which was observed in the children belonging to group 4 and 5, appeares only in the situation where manipulatable objects or attendants are absent and rapidly disappeares in the situation where are the proper stimulus from the environment. This resembles the one which appear at an infant phase in the normal development. The second type of SSB, which was observed in the group 1 and 2, occurs with high frequency in every situation. This type of SSB consists of two distinctive forms of behaviors, the one is idiosyncratically characterized pattern including fine quick movements, the another includes body contact to himself or gross movements. Although this type of SSB predominates over the ODB which is scarecely observed in these children, all of them showing the second type do not always seem to be more retarded than those showing the first type. Induldging themselves in this type of SSB may lower the responsiveness to the e

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Moter action training was applied to the cleft palate child for speech training. Most of patients with cleft palate have highly deteriorated articulation in the "Ka" or "Ra" speeching. Therefore the purpose of this training was to learn their habits of good articulation and to get motor action for speeching. Training was composed of three steps. The first step was to phonate "Ka" or "Ra" and to hear of their sound. The second step was phonatory action: especially, phonatory-respiratory-action and tongue relaxation and tongue action. "Ka"; touching the tongue to the middle of the palatum, the child phonated with breathing out powerfully. "Ra"; making the tongue sound, the child touched the tongue to the depth of the palatum and the child detouched the tongue with phonating. The third step was one word speech action and conversate action. This training was one hour time in a week and for two months. The results were as follows: This cleft palate child learned motor action for "Ka", "Ra" phonating. Furthermore, the child could have the habits of good articulation in speeching.

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