Recently, several viewpoints have been suggested regarding the relation between manual skills and language development. From the viewpoint of the development of symbolic ability, it is supposed that manual skills and language develop interdependently in the early stages of cognitive development. An alternative point of view is that manual skills are significantly correlated with language development, according to the functional asymmetry of the brain. The present study aims to clarify the process of development of manual skills and language, and to examine correspondences between the development of manual skill and language. Thirty-three right-hand-preference children with moderate mental retardation were classified according to their mental age (MA) into four groups: MA of 3, 4, 5, and 6 years. Each subject was assessed for manual skill and language development. Language development was estimated on selected items from the Auditory Reception and Verbal Expression test (ITPA) and a verbal regulation test; manual skill was estimated on a peg-moving task and a hand posture task. The results were as follows: 1. Manual skill and language developed synchronistically between MA 3 and 4 years, and between MA 5 and 6 years. 2. Positive correspondences were shown between performances on selected ITPA items and the manual skill measures for the children in the MA 3 years group. 3. Negative correspondences were shown between performances on selected ITPA items and the manual skill measures for the children in the MA 5 and 6 years groups. The implications of the results were discussed from the viewpoint of the development of symbolic ability and the functional organization of the brain. It was suggested that, although the development of manual skills may be intrinsically related to language development, the developmental relation between manual skills and language changes, depending on the mental age.

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The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between speech perception and speech production through teaching speech behavior to 11 children with hearing impairments, aged 3 to 6 years. Speech behavior was defined as the activities of human motor skills and discriminating behaviors based on visual and auditory movement. Sugai's Speech Behavior Test was used. A popular Japanese nursery rhyme was used to analyze the process of learning speech behavior. The process of development of speech behavior was observed to have the following stages: 1st stage: The children began to learn how to move and control their body and hand gestures. Here, the tactile plus visual sign input channel was more effective than auditory signs (the song). 2nd stage: The children began to learn how to form the hand gestures that go with the nursery rhyme. A visual sign (hand gesture) was necessary in order for them to make the hand gestures. 3rd stage: The children began to form the hand gestures for the nursery rhyme and make them correspond to the song. 4th stage: The children began to sing the nursery rhyme while they made the hand gestures. 5th stage: The children began to discriminate the nursery song recorded with band accompaniment. In the first and second stages, tactile and visual signs played a much more important role than the auditory stimulus (the song) in the formation of hand gestures. In the third stage, the children began to associate the auditory stimulus with the hand gestures. Speech perception was considered to have been established in this stage. As a result, tactile and visual sign communication behaviors were essential. Without them, speech perception did not occur. A new theory of speech perception and production was proposed.

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The purposes of this study were (a) to investigate the structure of college students' attitudes toward people with physical disabilities, and (b) to examine the relation of the students' field of study and gender to the factors obtained. University students in the sample included 145 human science majors, 107 economics majors, and 142 child education majors. They were asked to answer a 54-item questionnaire concerning physical disability, rating items on a 7-point Likert-type scale. Factor analysis of the questionnaire results yielded five psychologically meaningful oblique factors: 1. Non-acceptance in Daily Living: The college students who did not have physical disabilities tended to reject personal relations, particularly close or family relations, with people with physical disabillties in a community. 2. Emotionally Unstable Character: People with physical disabilities get discouraged easily and often become cross. 3. Social Assistance: The government and large enterprises should give financial support to people with physical disabilities and make an effort to remove enviromental barriers. 4. Happy Life: People with physical disabilities can live as happily and comfortably as those without physical disabilities. 5. Denial of Independence: People with physical disabilities should live separately from others and need not work. On the basis of correlation coefficients and content similarities among factors, the above five factors were grouped into three areas: Interpersonal Relationships (including the "Non-acceptance in Daily Living" factor), Conditions of People with Physical Disabilities (including the "Emotionally Unstable Character" and"Happy Life" factors), and Social Relations (including the "Social Assistance" and "Denial of Independence" factors). Subjects' reactions to these factors were then compared with a chi-square test [including Haberman's (1973) analysis of residuals]. The results of comparisons among the three academic majors indicated that the economics majors, when compared to the other two groups, showed less favorable reactions to the "Non-acceptance in Daily Living" factor, and reacted more positively to the "Emotionally Unstable Character" factor than the child education majors did, whereas the latter showed a more favorable reaction to the "Social Assistance" factor than the former. Results of a comparison between genders suggested that the males tended to react to the "Emotionally Unstable Character" factor more positively than the females did. Recommendations were made for future studies on attitudes toward people with physical disabilities.

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The purposes of the present study were to obtain individual data about the motor abilities (back strength, grip strength, vertical jump, and 25-meter run) of children with mental retardation, and to investigate the relations between motor abilities, chronological age (CA), and mental age (MA). Subjects were between 6 and 16 years old, and were enrolled in elementary and junior high school classes for children with disabilities. Each of the subjects was administered the Tanaka-Binet Intelligence Test individually. Data were presented on CA-MA coordinates (graphs in which CA was plotted on the abscissa and MA on the ordinate), with data points marking the performance level shown on each motor task. In addition, two lines with the slopes of 0.3 (MA/CA=0.3, IQ=30) and 0.6 (MA/CA=0.6, IQ=60) were drawn on those same coordinates. In this way, full information could be obtained about the subjects' motor performance, CA, MA, and IQ. The results were as follows: 1. The back strength of the male subjects was related to both CA and MA as a whole, but the influence of MA seemed to wane at high CA levels. 2. The back strength of the female subjects was related to both CA and MA as a whole. 3. The grip strength of the male subjects was related to CA as a whole, but at the strongest grips (above 30kg.), it was also related to MA. 4. The grip strength of the female subjects was related to CA as a whole, but at the strongest grips (above 20kg.), it was also related to MA. 5. The height of the male subjects' vertical jumps was related to MA as a whole, but at the greater heights, it was also related to CA. 6. The height of the female subjects' vertical jumps was related to MA as a whole, but at the greatest heights (above 30cm.), it was also related to CA. 7. The speed of the male subjects' 25-meter run was related to MA as a whole, but at the fastest rates (below 5.5sec.), it was also related to CA. 8. The speed of the female subjects' 25-meter run was related to MA as a whole, but at the fastest rates (below 5.5sec.), it was also related to CA.

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The purpose of the present study was to clarify the relationship between the attitude and the speech of mothers who are rearing a child with mental retardation. The TAKEN TEST of Parental Attitudes toward Child Rearing was administered to 15 mothers, and their speech when interacting with their children with disabilities was analyzed. The tendency to reject, as measured on the TAKEN TEST, was then correlated with maternal speech indices relating to rejection of the child. The results were that the more rejecting the mothers were, the more sympathy and maternal response to the child was found in their speech. These results suggest that maternal attitude evaluated as an internal cognition by the TAKEN TEST did not agree with the mothers' speech in a real situation. The reason for this effect is that mothers whose TAKEN TEST scores showed a rejecting attitude did not speak rejecting utterances in the interactions that were observed.

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This study investigated the effects of Motor-Action Training on a child with severe mental retardation. The present author (Tohya, 1988) had trained a 9-year-old girl for 6 months and reported that some inappropriate behaviors decreased, target behaviors increased, and her posture improved as a result of the training. The present study, a continuation of Tohya (1988), reports the effects of 20 months' further training. The effects of the training were evaluated from data taken from videotaped records, behavior-observation records, and photographs of her posture. As a result of the training, the following improvements were found. 1. The frequency of inappropriate behaviors observed during a 5-minutes' arm-lifting task decreased further. 2. About 9 months after the beginning of the training, the frequency of eye contacts with the trainer, which had gradually increased, began to decrease, while the duration of eye contact began to increase. 3. The remarkable improvements were found in interpersonal behavior, eating behavior, playing, and motor control, both before and after the time described in # 2. 4. Her posture continued to improve. This study confirms the earlier one in showing that the self-control skills learned through Motor-Action Training are useful in every aspect of behavior, even though the only task trained was motor control; it also shows that there is a close relation between eye contact and other behaviors.

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