The effects of adult gestural monitoring on the communicative behavior of prelinguistic children with severe mental retardation were investigated. Gestural monitoring occurs when an adult imitates a child's gesture that request an object or action. Four adult-child dyads participated in this study, which used a single subject multiple baseline research design with a few weeks' baseline and several weeks' treatment. The children, all boys, ranged from 5 to 9 years in age; they were likely to make requests with non-indicative gestures, such as folding their arms or clapping. Their communicative behavior in the baseline period was compared with that in the treatment period. Three hypotheses were examined. First, it was assumed that the children would not accept what the adults offered verbally in response to the children's request. Second, it was expected that the adults' gestural monitoring would be accepted by the children, and, third, it was also expected that an increase in the children's gazing at the adult while they were gesturing would parallel the children's expression of their acceptance. The results supported the hypotheses with a few exceptions. The results in the baseline period were as follows Three of the children never expressed acceptance, but were likely to imitate the adults' gestures or ignore the adults' verbal responses. The fourth child expressed acceptance in a third of trials. Two of the children hardly looked at the adult while they were gesturing, whereas the other two looked at the adult during half of their gestures. In the treatment phase, the rates of expressing acceptances increased for all children, reaching 90%-100%. The rate of looking at the adult also increased for three of the children during treatment phase, reaching 90%-100%, whereas for the fourth child, it did not change from baseline to treatment. Thus, a pattern of adult-child communicative cooperation was established in all the dyads. This pattern consisted of the follwing three parts; the child's initial gesture, the adult's gestural monitoring, and the child's acceptance of that. This pattern greatly resembles what Golinkoff (1986) found in communications between 12-month-old infants without disabilities and their mothers. Further investigation is required to determine whether these results could be replicated in a larger number of dyads composed of a prelinguistic child with severe mental retardation and an adult.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of endurance running on the physical fitness of children with mental retardation. 28 girles with mental retardation (15 years old; mean IQ, 45) participated in a 15-minutes-a-day endurance run program, 5 days a week for 2 years. In order to assess improvement in their physical fitness, measures on seven tests (1000m run, trunk flexion, back strength, grip strength, 50m run, standing broad jump, and softball throw) were obtained before and after the 2-year endurance run program. These results were compared with results from a control group (26 girls with mental retardation, 15 years old, mean IQ of 47). The mean time for the 1000m run for the training group decreased significantly from 433 seconds to 385 seconds. In contrast, the control group mean increased from 471 seconds to 480 seconds. The training group also showed a statistically significant improvement in the back strength, standing broad jump, and softball throw tests. The control group did not improve on any test items. No significant relationship was observed between changes in the 1000m run and changes on the six other tests. These results suggest that there is a great deal of specificity in motor functions in children with mental retardation.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine how children with hearing impairments comprehend metaphors. To do this, 20 sentences containing metaphors were selected; 10 of the sentences had perceptual metaphors, and 10, conceptual metaphors. A multiple-choice task was administered to subjects individually. Subjects were 44 students with severe or profound hearing impairments attending elementary, middle, and high schools for children with hearing impairments. Their hearing level, IQ, and reading age were controlled. In the multiple-choice task, the subjects were asked to choose the most appropriate paraphrase for the sentences containing a metaphor. The main results were as follows: (1) Scores on conceptual metaphors did not improve until the children were high school age. (2) The elementary school students who were in the fourth grade tented to interpret metaphors irrationally. (3) Students who found it difficult to comprehend a metaphor tended to choose the literal alternative. It seemed that these difficulties in metaphor comprehension were caused by the poverty of the children's everyday experiences. Therefore, to prompt the development of metaphor comprehension, it seems to be necessary for children with hearing impairments to have a lot of experiences, so that their ability to make inferences improves.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relation between balance performance and behavior regulation. Two types of balance performance were investigated: dynamic balance, which was evaluated by a beam-walking task, and static balance, which was measured by a one-foot balance task (eyes open). We evaluated behavior regulation by three motor impersistence tasks (Motor Impersistence Test, or MIT: Garfield, 1964). The relation between performance on the MIT and each balance task was examined in 129 persons with mental retardation. The poorer the behavior regulation performance was, the poorer was the static balance performance. The relation between performance on the behavior regulation test and dynamic balance was, however, not clear in comparison with the relation between the former and static balance. We also found that a physical setting that required people to figure out how to maintain their posture using external cues intuitively, worked effectively to improve the static balance of those persons with mental retardation who had showed a poorer level of behavior regulation. In that setting, we used a one-foot balance task with a platform (width 10cm, length 30cm, height 5cm) on which the subject could put only one supporting foot. Participants in this part of the study were 92 persons with mental retardation.

View full abstract

In order to have a basis for developing writing skill in children with mental retardation, the present study examined elements that may be related positively to the ability to acquire writing skills in younger children without disabilities. Subjects were 10 children who were learning writing skills; they were from 3 years 8 months to 7 years 11 months old. They were tested on 5 tasks: (1) writing kana (the tester dictated the Japanese words for dog, picture book, mama, and papa) and their own names; (2) naming geometric figures (a triangle and others); (3) copying the same figures; (4) reading (46 hiragana syllables); and (5) doing some tasks selected from the Frostig Developmental Test of Visual Perception (DTVP). Writing skill was categorized into 4 levels: correctly written; unstable with few errors; unstable and right on only half of the problems; and impossible. From the comparison of this estimation with other test performances, the following were pointed out: (1) writing skill is preceded by reading ability, suggesting the importance of the prior acquisition of the latter; (2) copying figures is related strongly to writing, that is, good performers in writing are likely to copy a triangle or star-like figure successfully; (3) on the DTVP, items in Tests I, II, and V are related to writing performance, and a perceptual age (PA) of 4 years 3 months seems to be a borderline for the establishment of writing. Abilities such as drawing a line within a 3-mm band width in Test I (eyemotor coordination), extraction of a figure from overlapping ones in Test II (figure-ground discrimination), and discrimination and drawing of a line to connect dots in a matrix (9 or 24 dots) following a sample in Test V (spatial relationships) are thought to be potential bases for progress in writing skill.

View full abstract