Many profoundly retarded persons (PRs) show weak responsive behavior to visual stimuli. Especially if they have severe motor dysfunction, estimation of the visual receptive process is difficult, and yet an estimation method is needed in nursing and educational situations. The present study examined some properties of the visual receptive processes of profoundly retarded persons, through inverstigating visual evoked potentials (VEPs), pupillary light reflexes (PLRs), and responsive behavior to visual stimuli. Subjects were 29 profoundly retarded persons (chronological age 4 years to 20 years 9 months, developmental age 1 month to 8 months) and 8 nonretarded adults (ages 20 years 3 months to 25 years 3 months). Results and discussion are as follows: 1. According to the distribution of visual evoked potentials on the scalp, the profoundly retarded subjects were classified into five groups: 9 subjects who showed visual evoked potential components in both occipital and central regions (Roc group), 4 subjects who showed those components only around the occipital region (Ro group), 3 subjects with components only around the central region (Rc group), and 3 subjects with no components (NR group). In the other 10 subjects, it was difficult to identify the components clearly (DR group). (Figs. 1, 2, 3) 2. Only one profoundly retarded subject showed no pupillary light reflexes in the right eye; the other 28 profoundly retarded subjects showed pupillary light reflexes. (Fig. 4) 3. From observations made by teachers who gave daily care to the profoundly retarded subjects, 24 of the 29 subjects were considered to show weak responsive behavior to visual stimuli. (Table 1) 4. Various relationships among the responses on the three indices were found in the profoundly retarded subjects. Specifically, 5 profoundly retarded subjects showed responsive behavior, visual evoked potentials, and pupillary light reflexes. On the other hand, 7 profoundly retarded subjects showed visual evoked potentials and clear pupillary light reflexes, and 4 profoundly retarded subjects showed visual evoked potentials and unclear pupillary light reflexes, in spite of the failure to observe responsive behavior. In these cases, since the appearance of visual evoked potentials results from the electrical activity of the visual cortex, conduction of visual information to the visual cortex can be estimated. This confirmed the existence of this fundamental part of the visual receptive process. The other 13 profoundly retarded subjects showed neither visual evoked potentials nor responsive behavior, but 11 of them had clear pupillary light reflexes. In these cases, arrival of visual information at the visual cortex was not clear. Therefore, it might be necessary to find the optimal visual stimuli for each profoundly retarded person through studying the kind and intensity of stimuli that could elicit visual evoked potentials and responsive behavior. (Table 2) 5. It was pointed out that these indices were effective in estimating some properties of the visual receptive processes of profoundly retarded persons, and that the existence of various types of visual receptive processes in profoundly retarded persons was confirmed.

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A higher incidence of mental retardation and low intellectual functioning has been reported for Duchenne progressive muscular dystrophy (DMD) patients. In this study, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) was administered to 197 boys with DMD. Their ages ranged from 6 to 16 years, and their functional disability stages varied from ambulatory to bed-ridden. They had been hospitalized in a total of 15 national sanatoriums for from under 1 year to 11 years. The results of the testing were as follows: The WISC-R mean Full IQ was 67.8±19.4. The distribution of the Full IQs was skewed to the 70's mark. The mean Performance IQ of 75.2±18.2 was significantly higher than the mean Verbal IQ of 70.2±19.4 (p<0.01). No relationship was found between IQ and age or degree of functional disability. However, although the mean IQ seemed to deteriorate as hospitalization was extended up to 7 years' duration, this tendency was not statistically significant. The scaled scores for arithmetic and coding were the lowest on the verbal and performance subtests, respectively. The cause of mental retardation in patients with DMD seems to be a primary one. Our reasons for drawing this conclusion are as follows: (1) the mean IQ is lower than the population mean when the patients are very young and does not deteriorate further as a function of age, and (2) the mean IQ is also lower in patients whose functional disability stages are low and who have short durations of hospitalization. Though abnormal EEG and CT-scan findings have been reported, they are not clearly correlated to the low IQ. Thus, further study of the intellectual functioning of DMD patients from various points of view is warranted, in order to understanding the nature of their mental retardation. Further study is also needed of the difference in tested IQs between the WISC and the WISC-R. The WISC mean Full IQ was 86.8±19.5. The origin of this difference is not clear from our data.

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The development of sentence comprehension, with the sequence of acquisition of joshi (post-position) as a principal measure, was examined in 65 deaf school children in the 3rd to 6th grades. The results were as follows: 1. When simple sentences were used, complete sentences were comprehended better than incomplete ones, even in the condition in which the complete sentences had to be remembered. 2. Comprehension of the post-position ga preceded that of wa. 3. Error analysis revealed the following trends: (a) There was a tendency to take an animate noun at the start of a sentence as agentival. These results from the present study were compared with those from previous studies of normal children's sentence comprehension. (b) With dative-construction sentences, there was a tendency for the last noun in the sentence to be taken as dative or objective, without regard to the joshi. Concerning the last result, the present article proposes a new assumption.

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College students' images of a motor-handicapped child were studied in Japan and Korea by use of the semantic differential technique. Concepts studied in the present investigation were motor-handicapped child and, for comparative purposes, two other handicapped childen (mentally retarded child and blind child) and three other persons (normal child, old man, and orphan). Originally, the semantic scales were composed of 40 seven-point bipolar adjectives specific to each concept (i. e., person being rated), but in the present study, only 13 semantic scales, consisting of adjectives common to all concepts were used, in order to make possible the comparative study of the concepts. The 13 scales used in this study were Good-Bad, Beautiful-Ugly, Pleasant-Unpleasant, Fast-Slow, Bright-Dark, Strong-Weak, Silent-Noisy, Happy-Sad, Big-Small, Healthy-Sick, Cheerful-Gloomy, Near-Distant, and Light-Heavy. Subjects were 317 students at 2 colleges in Japan, and 105 students at 3 colleges in Korea. Analysis of the data indicated that Japanese college students' images of a motor-handicapped child and of other handicapped children, and extracted factors that predominantly describe the semantic spaces, are as follows: (a) motor handicapped child: slightly slow but strong and cheerful child (factor of evaluation of value); (b) mentally retarded child: slightly slow, but beautiful, bright (as opposed to dark), and cheerful child (factor of evaluation of personality); (c) blind child: rather slow, dark, and silent child (factor of handicap). It was found that while both Japanese and Korean students thought of a motor-handicapped child as a child with trouble in the hands and/or feet who is slightly slow, the Korean students considered the child to be sad and silent, while the Japanese students thought of the child as strong and cheerful. It could be concluded that Japanese students held a rather more favorable image of a motor-handicapped child, although an old and unfavorable stereotyped image of handicapped persons survived in some subjects.

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The present report presents the results of a questionnaire survey on plans for and use of space in special classrooms for children with speech disorders. The actual space available in classrooms for handicapped children and the educational treatments used with those children were studied. The results were as follows: 1. Most of the classroom teaching was done with either an individualized or a group teaching system. The small rooms used for individual education and the space used for group training had to be arranged according to the conditions of the children's disabilities. 2. In terms of the use of space and spatial requirements, responses from most of the schools expressed the wish for a classroom that faced south, located on the ground floor. In only a few schools the common rooms or spaces in the school were not used. Most of the classrooms had a playroom, a learning room, and an observation room. 3. The points that should be considered when planning a specical classroom were, in order of importance, area, safety, disposition, silence, lighting, convenience, sense of security, intimacy, activity, ventilation, and illumination. 4. Most of the classrooms observed were of a "non-standard" type of construction. 5. Most of the classes had a corridor in the classroom.

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The purpose of this study was to shape manding behavior in a severely retarded child who showed perseverative behavior, and to obtain generalization of the manding. Perseverative behavior has been regarded as an inappropriate behavior, and is generally targeted as a behavior to be suppressed. However, in this study, the perseverative behavior was used to promote appropriate verbal behavior. In a study by Hung (1978), self-stimulation was used as a reinforcer, contingent on verbal behavior. However, Hung (1978) reported some difficulty in obtaining generalization of the newly learned responses to daily living settings. One possible reason for this was that the subject discriminated the difference between the training settings and daily living settings. Therefore, in the present study, it was attempted to chain the verbal behavior to discriminative stimuli of daily life, in order to promote generalization. It was also hypotheized that if low-frequency responses were chained to high-frequency responses, the former would increase in frequency. Specifically, high-rate perseverative behavior and modified perseverative behavior was made contingent on mand behavior, which was initially low in frequency. Modified perseverative behavior was defined as perseverative behavior in which the trainer became able to intervene. The procedure for shaping the mand behavior was as follows: (a) Pretraining: to increase spontaneous pointing and vocalization by positive reinforcement, including both feedback of the same vocalization by the trainer contingent on the subject's spontaneous vocalization, and the procedure of Differential Outcome Effect (DOE). (b) First step: to try to chain the vocalization to the trainer's intervention, and then to introduce a temporary deprivation of reinforcement by changing the reinforcement from immediate to delayed. The reinforcers were handing pegs to the subject, and the trainer's approval. (c) Second step: delayed reinforcement and presentation of the appropriate verbal model, if the child did not emit appropriate mand behavior. The results showed that mand behavior could be developed by chaining it to perseverative behavior and modified perseverative behavior. In the present study, the attempt to associate manding with the discriminative stimuli of daily life is considered the main cause of the generalization observed. The mand behavior acquired two functions, that is, obtaining pegs and playing with them; this was considered to be another cause.

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