In this study, 20 persons with cerebral palsy (10 of each sex, of whom 10 were athetosic and 10 spastic) and 20 normal persons (10 of each sex) were given simple and choice reaction tasks. In the simple reaction task, the subjects were asked to respond with elbow flexion or forearm supination to a light stimulus. In the choice reaction task, subjects were to respond with flexion to a light of one color (red or yellow), and with supination to a light of another color (yellow or red). Normal subjects' mean supination reaction time was significantly shorter than their flexion reaction time; the difference between the two reaction times on the choice task was significantly greater than on the simple task. For subjects with cerebral palsy, mean flexion reaction time was significantly shorter than supination time, and the difference between the two reaction times on the simple task was not significantly different from that on the choice task. Athetosic subjects' mean flexion reaction time was significantly shorter than their supination time, but the difference between their flexion and supination reaction times on the simple task was not significantly different from that on the choice task. For spastic subjects, mean flexion reaction time was shorter than supination reaction time on the simple task, but, on the choice task, mean reaction time for supination was slightly shorter than for flexion. "Flexion error reactions" were more frequent than "supination error reactions" in the subjects with cerebral palsy. These results suggest that persons with cerebral palsy are different from normal persons in the processing mechanism of the motor output stage. They also suggest that the relation of the jedgment stage to the motor output stage would not be serial and independent in persons with cerebral palsy.

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The purpose of this study was to compare the attitudes of regular school teachers and teachers of physically handicapped children toward the integration of handicapped children into regular schools. The sample included 178 teachers at regular primary schools, 198 teachers at regular junior high schools, and 126 teachers at schools for physically handicapped children. A two-part questionnaire was used. In the first part, questions were designed to measure general awareness of the integration of handicapped children into regular classes. For example, some questions asked about the teachers' knowledge about, interest in, and agreement with integration. Other questions asked for the teachers' feelings about the necessity of integration and the possibility of its development. Questions in the second part were designed to measure the degree of acceptance in regular classes of three types of handicapped children: children placed in a regular class since starting elementary school (T1); children starting elementary school in a regular class, but, in the middle of elementary school, transferred to a special school (T2); and children enrolled in a special school from school entry to the present (T3). The results showed that only the teachers at schools for physically handicapped children expressed strong interest in integrating such children into regular classes. However, regular primary school teachers were more in agreement with such integration than were regular junior high school teachers. All the teachers were more supportive of accepting the T1 and T2 children in regular classes than the children whose whole school career had been in special schools (T3). The regular school teachers raised different concerns about accepting T1 children than did teachers at special schools for physically handicapped children. On the whole, however, all three types of teachers responded similarly to the questions about acceptance of the three types of children into regular classes. The present authors' point is that this similarity must be considered as follows: the teachers at schools for physically handicapped children regarded the present regular schools as suitable places for educating handicapped children as realistically as did the teachers at regular schools.

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In this study of speech perception, subjects were children, 9 with sensorineural hearing loss and 20 with normal hearing. Two series of speech identification experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, five isolated vowels, /a, i, u, e, o/, were used; Experiment 2, 12 consonant-vowel syllables, each comprised of one of the consonants /k, s, t, p/ in combination with one of the vowels /a, e, o/ were used. Segments consisted of the steady 12.8 to 102.4ms of each vowel in Experiment 1, and the initial 12.8 to 128ms of each consonant-vowel syllable in Experiment 2. In both experiments, the sounds spoken by an adult female speaker were temporally segmented in 12.8ms steps. Experiment 1 showed that, for normal-hearing children, only 51 ms were needed to identify vowels correctly. However, for children with sensorineural hearing loss, 108ms were insufficient for the correct identification of vowels. For all subjects in this experiment, the responses given tended to be vowels that resembled the F2-F1 values of the stimuli. When subjects with sensorineural hearing loss could not detect F2, their responses were based entirely on the F1 values. Experiment 2 showed that the aperiodic portion of a consonant-vowel syllable is sufficient for the correct identification of consonants by normal-hearing subjects. Subjects with sensorineural hearing loss seemed to use the contextual effects of consonant-vowel syllables in order to identify the consonant. Consonant-confusion patterns observed in subjects with sensorineural hearing loss were similar to those in subjects with normal hearing. Subjects with sensorineural hearing loss demonstrated poorer consonant categories than vowel categories. Although subjects with moderate hearing impairments did not differ in vowel-identification performance from those with severe impairments, they did differ in performance on consonant-vowel syllable identification. Analyses of the date from both experiments indicate that speech categories in hearing-impaired children are inferior to those in children with normal hearing.

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Adults who had been health-impaired in childhood were studied, to examine their remembered and current attitudes toward mental problems caused by those infirmities. The purpose of the study was to gather reports on how they coped with their difficulties and the efforts they made to overcome them. Questionnaires were mailed to 3900 graduates of a special school for health-impaired children. Data were usable from the responses of 305 men and 180 women, 20 to 42 years old. The questionnaires included 24 items to detect their past and current mental problems, and 20 items on their attitudes toward those problems. The mental problems asked about included difficulties in personal relations, such as feelings of alienation from friends, restrictions on activities, and bodily inferiority. The attitude items included both constructive or active attitudes, such as getting over the infirmity, and passive attitudes, such as resignation. Factor analysis was carried out on the attitude data, separating the time periods (combining all post-junior high school data) and sexes, and on the reported severity of mental problems, by the three time periods. The time periods covered included (a) elementary and junior high school ages, (b) senior high school and after, and (c) the present. The factor analysis of attitudes toward mental problems revealed some major factors, for example, in elementary and junior high school, finding salvation or resignation in one's own way, and, in senior high school and later, getting on in life passively and resignedly, or getting over the infirmity. Thus, as the period asked about was more recent, the reported coping behavior became either more positive or more negative. Analysis of the relation between reports of coping behavior and of the severity of mental problems showed that, for all age periods asked about, coping behavior changed from passive to active, or from optimistic (such as physical exercise) to pessimistic (such as resignation), as the mental problems increased.

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The P3 wave (a positive potential with latencies of 300-700ms) of the human event-related potential is known as an endogenous cognitive component that reflects the activity of the higher brain functional systems, such as discriminative information processing. The purpose of this study was to clarify the developmental characteristics and specificity of the P3 waves of mentally retarded children, compared to normal children matched for either chronological or mental age. Two groups of subjects were used. One group consisted of 32 normal children from 6 to 14 years old and 3 normal adults; the other, of 11 mentally retarded children from 12 to 15 years old, with measured IQs ranging from 50-79. Experiments were conducted under either passive or active conditions. In the passive condition, subjects were instructed to sit quietly and observe two stimuli (an equilateral triangle and an inverted equilateral triangle), which were presented tachistoscopically in random order. In the active condition, subjects were instructed to press a button with the index finger of their dominant hand as quickly as possible, whenever the inverted triangle appeared. Event-related potentials were recorded in both conditions. The target stimuli elicited large P3 waves in almost all the subjects. The target P3 amplitudes were largest at Pz and smallest at Fz in all age groups. The decrease in target P3 latencies with age up to about 14 years of age, and the parallel between P3 latencies and reaction times, suggest that the speed of discriminative information processing increases with age. Target P3 latencies of the mentally retarded children were much longer than those of normal children matched for chronological age; however, the mentally retarded children's target P3 latencies were not significantly different from those of normal children matched for mental age. These results suggest that P3 latencies depend on the level of intellectual development. However, P3 latencies and amplitudes in some of the mentally retarded children deviated from their measured mental age level, suggesting that the P3 data for these children may be accounted for by some factor other than intellectual development.

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Subject in this study was an 11-year-old mute autistic boy with poor language comprehension. When he was instructed orally in sequence which of two objects to choose out of three different ones (e.g.,"choose cup and spoon", when presented with those objects and also a toothbrush), his first choice would be incorrect (e.g., the toothbrush instead of the cup), but he almost always chose the second one correctly. It seemed that he did not hear the first word of such two-word combinations. In each session, the subject was asked on about 40 trials to choose two out of three items presented, either a spoon, cup, and toothbrush, or, in later sessions, an orange, pencil, and scissors. In the Single Instruction condition, an adult said two words, once each. In the Double Instruction condition, the adult spoke the second word 2 sec. after the first, and spoke the two words again successively 2 sec. later. Over two months, there were 26 sessions. In the fifth session, when speaking the first word, the adult pointed to the tabletop on the boy's left side, and, when speaking the second word, to the tabletop on the boy's right side. Immediately the boy began to point without the adult model. That is, he would listen to the first word and point, and then listen to the second word and point, as the adult had done. With this behavior, he made more correct choices; the pointing seemed to help him hear both words. In the tenth session, he made correct choices on 73% of Single Instruction trials, and 95% of Double Instruction trials. At that time, pointing in the Single Instruction condition was occurring less often than before. When he was asked to choose the new objects, and when he was prevented for one or more seconds from making a choice, his pointing increased again. With the delay procedure, he could choose two objects correctly after a 3-sec. delay, but not after 5 sec. On almost all trials, he placed the first object selected in the place where he pointed first, and the second object selected. where he pointed second. The results of this study indicate that this boy had difficulty with the auditory language comprehension of a combination of two objects. This seemed to be caused by his restricted receiving and memorizing of auditory language. Through pointing, however, he could translate the two-word auditory stimulus into the visuo-spatial relationship of two objects. Visuo-spatially supported listening appeared to overcome his receiving and memorizing problems, and to facilitate comprehension of combinations of two words.

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