In the present research, concurrent training of a routine behavior was used with 2 boys with autism (an 8-year-old and a 13-year-old) to teach them that routine and also to teach them to say "thank you" spontaneously in the context of the routine. The routine consisted of 5 situations, such as requesting an object, borrowing an object, and requesting instructions. Generalization of the participants' behavior to daily living situations was monitored by their families and their homeroom teachers. The results indicated that the younger boy acquired the target behavior in the 5 situations, and the older boy, in 4 of the situations. In addition, in their daily living situations, they generalized the behavior of saying "thank you" not only to situations similar to those that they had been taught (e.g., requesting an object), but also to situations that they had not been taught (e.g., being given an object although they had not requested it). Moreover, generalization of saying "thank you" was observed in situations in which they had not been given an object (e.g., being helped even though the participant had not requested help). The present results suggest that generalization of a target behavior to daily living situations may be facilitated by establishing a routine that consists of various situations and teaching it by means of concurrent training.

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The aim of the present study was to investigate the use of local dialect by children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) or other intellectual disabilities (ID), and teachers' use of local dialect when speaking to students. Teachers (n=186) from all areas of Japan who were participating in study sessions held by the National Institute of Special Needs Education, and teachers of children with special needs in Kyoto (n=112), Maizuru (n=50), Kochi (n=169), Kita Kyushu (n=64), Oita (n=85), and Kagoshima (n=88), completed a questionnaire on the use of dialect by children with autism spectrum disorders or other intellectual disabilities. The teachers were asked to compare the prevalence of local dialect in the speech of children with autism spectrum disorders to its use in the speech of children without disabilities or typically developing children (TD) in their local area. In another survey, homeroom teachers at a school for special support education in Kochi completed a questionnaire in which they were asked to compare the use of 23 words unique to the Kochi dialect and the corresponding words in standard Japanese by students with and without autism spectrum disorders. In addition, the teachers who completed the first questionnaire were asked to evaluate their own use of the local dialect with children with autism spectrum disorders, children with intellectual disabilities, and typically developing children. The results were as follows: (a) The participants from all areas of Japan reported that children with autism spectrum disorders used the local dialect less often than did children with intellectual disabilities and typically developing children. (b) The teachers at the school for special support education in Kochi reported that their students with autism spectrum disorders used fewer words from the Kochi dialect than their students without autism spectrum disorders did. (c) Although teachers reported using local dialect words when speaking to typically developing children in everyday conversations, they indicated that they did not do that often with students in their schools. The results were discussed from the standpoint of the social function of dialects.

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The present study aimed to obtain information about easy-to-read line breaks in English real-time speech recognition captions for Japanese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) who were deaf and/or hard of hearing. The participants were Japanese learners of English who were congenitally deaf and/or hard of hearing. Patterns of their eye movements occurring at line breaks were identified and examined. In the caption texts used, the line breaks were selected to occur at pre-determined locations, depending on the chunks. Participants also reported their evaluation of the ease with which they could negotiate such line breaks. Both the participants who were deaf and/or hard of hearing and the participants without hearing impairments evaluated the line breaks that were designed to make punctuation easier for them to read. The results from those evaluations indicated that participants who were deaf and/or hard of hearing and who showed long reading spans and low regression rates preferred the text to be presented such that the periods appeared at the ends of the caption lines, immediately before the line breaks, whereas the other deaf and/or hard of hearing participants preferred the text to be presented such that the commas, as well as the periods, appeared at the ends of the caption lines, immediately before the line breaks.

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The present study examined the impact of behavioral instruction on 2 second-grade students' fluency with multiplication facts. The participants were public elementary school students who had difficulty in learning multiplication facts. After-school instructional sessions were conducted twice a week. The instructional package consisted of the "Cover-Copy-Compare" method (Skinner, Turco, Beatty, & Rasavage, 1989) and a timed-trial procedure with goal setting and feedback. First, each student learned multiplication facts with the Cover-Copy-Compare method. Then, they practiced them in 30-second timed trials with goal setting and feedback. If they beat their previous score, they received stickers that they liked. The number of correct and incorrect problems in these trials was recorded. A multiple probe design across 3 sets of instructional materials was used to evaluate the impact of the behavioral instruction. The results showed that both students increased their fluency with multiplication facts. However, 1 student's degree of improvement was not adequate, even though the instructional materials were modified for that student. The discussion deals with the need for refining instructional procedures and using other experimental designs.

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One of the important issues for today's school education is educational considerations for children with disabilities and special needs learning in regular classes. When conceptualizing current and future modes of special needs education and special educational considerations, it is important to examine the historical lineage of this practice, including its relation to regular education. As part of that examination, the present article reviews current issues concerning the history of special classes in the prewar period, and, in that context, clarifies current concerns. The present study organizes previous studies on the basis of the following 3 perspectives: realities of children, the legal system, and teaching methods, and analyzes previous studies as to whether their point of view is of re-positioning special classes as a continuum with regular classes, rather than as a fixed education for children with mental retardation. One point revealed by the present analysis is that previous studies did not try to break through the conventional framework of special classes for the education of children with disabilities. In addition, most of the previous studies reviewed did not have a perspective for understanding special classes. As a result of the analysis in each previous study, new facts were found. However, in the context of the spread and development of historical research on special classes overall, it is important to clarify the analytical perspective of special classes. In the future, it would also be important to clarify the continuity of special classes from prewar to postwar.

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The present article reviews research using behavioral approaches for strengthening the collaboration between parents and teachers of children with developmental disabilities who have behavior problems, and discusses the development of parenting interventions through parent-teacher collaboration. Many studies have investigated the efficacy of parent-teacher collaboration for promoting positive, adaptive behavior both at home and at school, in order to reduce problem behavior, using conjoint behavioral consultation and positive behavior support. Collaborative approaches recognize the needs, strengths, resources, values, and priorities of teachers as well as of parents, increase the participants' skills and knowledge to address future problems, and produce ongoing relationships between parents and teachers in order to improve students' performance. The present analysis yielded several questions in need of continued investigation. Improvements in the quality of life of families resulting from the use of a behavioral approach should be evaluated. The degree to which a speech act attempts to control the task in consultation, or the extent to which a statement directly or indirectly influences the process, may affect the results, and should be investigated. Effective methods for strengthening relationships between parents and teachers should be studied. Finally, other future directions for research were suggested, including developing behavioral contingencies based on an analysis of school environments in Japan, and developing supports for parents.

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The most prominent manifestation of specific language impairment (SLI) is the omission of grammatical morphemes, such as inflectional affixes and function words. The source of this grammatical deficit has not yet been determined, although various hypotheses have been proposed to account for it. The present paper examines 2 of these hypotheses, viz., those subsumed under the phonological processing deficit hypothesis, in order to assess their validity. More specifically, it examines whether it is possible for the problem of processing rapid sound change in temporal sequence, and the decreased capacity of phonological working memory / phonological short-term memory to provide an adequate explanation for the manifestations of grammatical deficit in individuals with specific language impairment. Future research should address the following: the appropriate selection of participants with specific language impairment when conducting a cross-sectional study, considering the existing subtypes that exhibit different linguistic manifestations, and, when conducting a longitudinal study, appropriate selection of participants with regard to age. Some language aspects that should be focused on from a linguistic point of view are also suggested, in order to determine characteristics of the grammatical deficit of Japanese individuals with specific language impairment. Finally, some technical issues are mentioned that should be addressed when designing language tests.

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