It has long been argued by many investigators that mentally retarded children have difficulty in transfering previously acquired cognitive strategies to a new task with different task requirements. It was thought that this difficulty occurred because these children do not spontaneously use metacognitive skill, which was regarded as an indispensable aspect of the transfer of cognitive strategies. In the present experiment, mentally retarded children were trained to use a self-checking skill that was applicable to a variety of cognitive tasks. The study then examined whether the children could take advantage of this trained skill on a transfer task. Subjects were 14 mentally retarded children, whose chronological ages ranged from 10:1 to 15:6, with a mean of 12:9, and whose measured mental ages ranged from 5:5 to 8:3, with a mean of 6:5. The subjects were divided into two equal groups: the training group and the control group. The training task was a recall readiness task; transfer was assessed on a match-to-sample task. Each subject was run individually. The experiment had three main phases. In Phase I (Pretest), all children were given the recall readiness test and the match-to-sample test, to assess their pretraining level of performance. In Phase II (Training), the children in the training group were given two days of training on the recall readiness task. In this training, the subjects initially observed a model perform the task using the self-checking skill (modeling). Then, subjects tried to do the task by themselves, although some assistance was given when needed (assisted performance). Finally, subjects were required to perform the task with no assistance (independent performance). On each of the two training days, a test was given at the end of the training (Posttest 1 and Posttest 2). The children in the control group were given the same materials as were used by the training group, but performed the task by themselves. Following Posttest 2, the match-to-sample task was given to all subjects as a test of transfer (Phase III). The results showed that (a) the mean number of items correctly recalled and the mean study time on the recall readiness task significantly increased with training in the training group, and (b) there was a significant decrease in the mean number of errors made by the training group on the transfer task. These results were regarded as an evidence that mentally retarded children are able to transfer a cognitive strategy if they have learned some kinds of metacognitive skill.

View full abstract

Hemophilic intra-articular bleeding tends to recur in a particular joint. Bleeding in the joint seriously damages the adjacent tissue and causes chronic arthropathy. It has not yet been established that how to rehabilitate joints suffering from hemophilic chronic arthropathy. Therefore, hemophilic patients become limited in their daily activities because of deterioration of their joints. The purpose of this paper was to investigate the cause of arthropathy and to study the possibilities of rehabilitation. In the present study, one adult hemophilic patient (Hemophilia A) was observed for 8 years. In the period of observation, two types of deterioration were found in this patient's left knee joint. One was joint contracture; the other, joint instability. Before the two types of deterioration appeared, the patient's weight increased remarkably. We infer that the interaction between the weight increase and overwork of the joint resulted in the joint contracture. Furthermore, it may be inferred that an interaction between the increase in weight and muscle weakness caused by insufficient exercise produced the instability of the joint. The patient received rehabilitation therapy that had three aims: (a) increasing the range of motion of the joint, (b) improving the stability of the joint, and (c) strengthening the muscle and improving the coordination of movement in the patient's whole body. As a result of this therapy, the function of the patient's left knee joint was improved, and consequently, knee joint bleeding (the patient's principal symptom) disappeared. This improvement in function of the patient's knee joint supports our inference, and suggests a possible technique of rehabilitation for hemophilic arthropathy.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyze the relation between the attributes of each Kanji character (number of years studied, number of strokes, regularity, hieroglyphicity, frequency of use) and Kanji writing performance in low vision and normal vision children. Subjects were 87 normal and 54 low vision children in the 6th grade. Writing tests were composed of 100 Kanji characters, The 2nd-grade children had a test of 20 Kanji characters that they must learn at the 1st-grade. The 3rd-grade children had a test of a total of 40 of the 1st and 2nd. Similarly, the 4th-grade children were tested on 60 characters, the 5th-grade children on 80, and the 6th-grade children on 100. Answers were scored in three categories: correct, wrong and no answer. Results were as follows: 1. For the low vision children, the correlation between each of the five attributes of Kanji characters and the percentage of characters that were written correctly was at least 0.40 for all attributes. 2. For the normal vision children, the corresponding correlations were at least 0.40 on all attributes except frequency of use. 3. The partial correlation coefficients for each of the five attributes with kanji-writing performance were calculated after controlling for the effects of the remaining four attributes by controlling the effects of other 4 factors. Number of years studied was correlated with writing performance in both low and normal vision children. In addition, the regularity of the Kanji was correlated slightly with writing performarce in the low vision children in low vision children. This result was also comfirmed by multiple regression analysis.

View full abstract

Subjects, 8 blind and 8 partially sighted children, were asked to walk independently in a natural setting for 1.5km. The streets covered included both wide and narrow streets, as well as intersections and shopping areas. After the walk, the children were asked to draw a map of where they had been. The children's behavior as they walked was observed and analyzed. Results were as follows: 1. Partially sighted children were more likely to walk in the middle of a sidewalk, while blind children tended to walk along the outer edge of a wide sidewalk, often meandering to avoid obstacles and other pedestrians on the road in the shopping areas. 2. Partially sighted children walked faster, and stopped walking less often, than the blind children did. 3. At intersections, the blind children often started across when the signal was red and stopped when it was green. 4. The blind children often went straight ahead when they should have turned to the right or left. 5. At crosswalks, the blind children more often stood still, and more often touched or hit other pedestrians or obstacles, while the partially sighted children crossed more smoothly. 6. The maps drawn by the blind children showed generally that they could not reproduce their path, nor remember the number of signals that they had passed. The difference found between the blind and the partially sighted children's walking in the city seemed to occur because apparently the blind children could not comprehead the obstracles and other pedestrians and had poor judgement about their immediate surroundings, while the partially sighted children showed better comprehension and judgment.

View full abstract

Among Down's syndrome children, many show more lag in expressive language development than in receptive language development. The aim of the present investigation was to demonstrate the relation between hand preference and this difference between expressive and receptive language development. Fifty-five Down's syndrome children were classified into 3 groups according to their mental age (MA): the Low-MA Group (MAs below 2 years), 17 children; the Middle-MA Group (MAs of 3 years), 20 children; and the High-MA Group (MAs of 4 to 6 years), 18 children. A hand-preference test and a language-development test for infants were given individually to each subject. The hand-preference test consisted of 7 tasks (handing over a block, pressing a switch, pointing, drawing a circle, beating a drum, throwing a ball, eating a chocolate). On each task, a stimulus object was presented in front of subject in one of three positions: on the right, middle, or left side. Stimulus objects were presented one at a time. The hand used by the subject to do each task in each of the 3 positions was recorded on all 7 tasks. Those subjects who consistently used their right hand for any or all tasks were identified as right-handed type, those who consistently used the left hand for any or all tasks, as left-handed type. Those who showed both preferences were identified as mixed -handed type, and those who did not show any consistent tendency on all tasks were rated as indistinguishable-handed type. The children's teachers were asked to administer a language development test for infants to the subjects. This test enabled evaluation of language development on receptive and expressive dimensions. The results were as follows: (1) Thirty-six per cent of the subjects were not right handed. (2) The incidence of non-right-handedness was not correlated with mental age. (3) A significant diffrence between receptive and expressive language scores was shown for right-handed subjects in the Low- and Middle MA Groups, but not for the non-right-handed subjects. These findings suggest that the high incidence of non-right-handed subjects could not be accounted for in terms of genetics, learning, or immaturity, and that the difference between expressive and receptive language development in right-handed children might relate to speech lateralization.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract