精神薄弱児の行動特性とタッピング作業についての一分析

The purpose of this study is to clarify how the behavior trait of mentally retarded children influences upon the tapping task.
The Ss are 51 mentally retarded children from 7 years and three months to 15 years and three months. We take up two types of behavior trait. One is the excited-impulsive type and the other is the introverted-dreamy type. The correlation between the excited-impulsive score and mental age is -0.330. The correlation between the introverted-dreamy score and IQ score is -0.346.
At the tapping task, the correlation between mean performance score and mental age is 0.788. At mental age of 8 years, performance score increases rapidly. The occillation score, the largest percentage of the blocking and the frequency of the blocking over 20% are correlated with mental age negatively and weakly. The higher the mentalage of the children is, the more stable the performance is.
With respect to the relation between the behavior trait and the tapping performance, the occilation score, the largest percentage of the blocking and the frequency of the blocking over 20% are correlated with the excited-impulsive score weakly when mental age is controlled. The upper group of the excited-impulsive score is less performance score, higher occilation score, higher largest blocking percentage, and more frequency of the blocking over 20% than the lower group. The children with high excited-impulsive score do not concentrate on their task. As to the relation between the introverted-dreamy score and the tapping task, we do not find the significant result to take up. The upper group of the children with high introverted-dreamy score performed as well as the lower group.
We retested the tapping task with an interval of one year. The test-retest reliability of the performance score, the occilation score, the rest pause effect, the largest percentage of the blocking and the frequency of the blocking over 20% are strong, 0.717 to 0.953.
It is necessary to investigate the psychophsiological aspect of the behavior trait and the tapping task in mentally retarded children on the basis of cortical activity.