The purpose of the present study was to establish comprehension of the value of money for a child with autism, so that he would be able to live independently in his community. Three children participated in Experiment 1: one eight-year-old boy with autism, and two children without autism… a three-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl. The children were taught to identify 100 yen and 10 yen coins by an errorless learning procedure using a stimulus equivalence paradigm and auditory control. In Experiment 2, the boy with autism was trained in the skill of comparing coins and prices in numerals up to 100 yen, in 10-yen steps. After the training, stimulus generalization was examined by testing discrimination of an equivalence between prices and coins with a transition. As a result of Experiment 1, all three children could distinguish between the coins when the trainer asked them orally. There were no differences among the three children except that the boy with autism took more trials than the other two children. However, the boy with autism could not infer the value of the coins, although he could identify numeral prices and express the symmetry between prices and coins by counting spontaneously. Actually, he could not demonstrate stimulus generalization in Experiment 2, in spite of showing the ability to count in order from 10 yen to 100 yen in 10-yen steps. These results suggest the effectiveness of the errorless learning procedure. They also show the functional independence of the two stimuli… coins and prices… and the two types of skill for the basic comprehension of the value of money. That is, understanding monetary value is necessary for the skill of discriminating equivalence, and also for making comparisons between prices and coins.

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In regular elementary school first-grade classes using group-teaching methods, some of the children do not learn to write hiragana syllables (a kind of Japanese writing system), even if they receive additional individual guidance. The purpose of the present study was to present the essential problems in teaching handwriting in a group setting and in individual guidance for children with writing difficulties. First-grade teachers were surveyed with a questionnaire that asked about the prevalence of handwriting difficulty in the students in their classes, the methods they used for group teaching and for individual guidance, problems in each of these teaching situations, and cues for improving teaching methods. The main results were as follows: (1) According to the teachers' reports, with group teaching, 7.1% of the children learned to write only incompletely, and 3.2% of the children did not show enough improvement even with individual guidance. (2) Tracing and copying were the main teaching methods; in group teaching, teachers paid attention to the sequence in which the strokes of the syllables were written. Individual guidance was generally undertaken within the group-teaching setting; the teaching methods were similar to those used in the group teaching. (3) In group teaching, matters to be investigated were the coping form with individual variations and the diagnostic method for each constituent-like writing sequence, the pencil grip, the form of the written syllable, and writing pressure. In individual guidance, a shortage of teaching time was a very serious problem, in addition to the problems pointed out in connection with group teaching. These results suggested that early improvement of teaching methods is necessary to deal with problems such as writing syllables with strokes in the wrong sequence, and other problems that arose because some children did not learn to write correctly with the current teaching methods. The teaching style for children with writing difficulties should be decided after careful consideration of the relationship between individual guidance and group teaching, because many teachers wished to give individual guidance in the group-teaching setting.

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The Japanese version of the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) was used to show that the sequential processing ability of a child (CA=5:3) with cerebral palsy and developmental delay in drawing and writing was stronger than his simultaneous processing ability. Figure-drawing training and letter-writing training were carried out based on sequential processing style. This program focused on the following points: (a) presenting information in sequential order, rather than as a whole, (b) giving audio-linguistic cues, and (c) helping the child be aware that his sequential information-processing ability is strong. Through this program, the child came to be able to draw squares and triangles, and to write one-third of all hiragana characters.

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In order to consider the influence of criticism of instruction upon forming perspectives on the teaching of children with mental retardation, the present article aimed at the following points: (1) analyzing the change of perspectives on teaching held by students trained to be teachers in clinical training of education for children with disabilities, and (2) analyzing the influence of criticism by student teachers who are learning in this clinical training, upon the formation of students' perspectives on teaching. The main results were as follows: Only concrete criticism based on the facts in the instruction and on the teacher's experience could improve the students' teaching and form their perspectives on teaching.

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The purpose of the present study was to analyze memory performance and memory process in two spatial location conditions in adolescents with mild or moderate mental retardation and in persons with no intellectual disability. One condition was a 2×2 matrix, and the other, a 3×3 matrix. In these matrices, 72 color picture cards were arranged so that one book consisted of 18 pages, and the other, 8. Each subject was asked to relocate the picture cards after looking through each page of one of these books. The results showed there was no difference in memory performance between the two spatial location conditions, or between the group of subjects with mental retardation and the group without. Moreover, the sequence of presentation of the picture cards did not affect memory performance. These results suggest that memory of spatial location is not loaded very much in the memory system, and that subjects did not use a rehearsal strategy. These findings show that subjects with mental retardation can process spatial location as well as subjects without retardation because memory of spatial location is not loaded very much in the memory system.

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In the present paper, we examine methodological problems in prior research done on the gait of children with mental retardation, and explain the characteristics of their gait. The gaits of 25 students in a school for children with mental retardation were assessed using information provided on a 25-item questionnaire filled out by four teachers at the school. The results on 57% of the assessment items were agreed on 100% by all four teachers. Furthermore, we tested them using 3 statistical techniques. Two of these gave similar values. Some characteristics showed good agreement, but others, poor agreement. Good ones reflected a large or clear motion in the gait. The characteristics showing poor agreement were ones that needed comprehensive judgment, or that depended on particular circumstances at the time.

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Most studies that have examined the hypothesis that children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have frontal lobe dysfunction have concluded that this hypothesis cannot be rejected. However, analysis of individual tests sensitive to frontal lobe dysfunction revealed that children with ADHD consistently got lower scores than normal children only on the Vigilance Task and the Porteus Maze Test. Based on the physiological and neurological studies, it was suggested that ADHD arises from dysfunction of not only the frontal lobe, but also the subcortical structures involved in arousal mechanisms. It was considered that lower scores on Vigilance Task in children with ADHD represented dysfunction of the frontal lobe-reticular formation system which has a role in regulating the level of arousal. In addition, the lower scores obtained by children with ADHD on the Porteus Maze Test represent dysfunction of planning. In future studies, it may be interesting to examine how planning ability changes during the development of children with ADHD.

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