Published papers

Many published articles have supported the assumption of "mindblindness", according to which difficulties in understanding others' mind states produce serious social-communication impairments in individuals with autism spectrum disorders. However, some studies have shown that performance on "theory of mind" tasks, which are thought to reflect one's abilities to represent others' mental states, does not predict social communication impairments in daily life. The present article proposes a hypothesis to replace the mindblindness assumption, based on study of a boy (11 years 5 months old) with high-functioning autism. "Theory of mind" tasks were examined, together with an attempt to analyze the boy's understanding of causal relations between his own and others' behavior and his own and others' states. The participant in the study could attribute the current states, including the mental states, of his own and others to others' past behavior, but he could not attribute them to his own past behavior. In other words, he could understand the causal relation between the current states of others and their past behavior, but could not do this in the case of his own past behavior. Although he passed "theory of mind" tasks, he showed many serious problems in his interactions with others. These findings suggest that if the self involved in social communication produces problems, difficulty in self-recognition may be another important factor in social-communication impairments. The discussion suggests that it would be important to focus on the effects of difficulties in self-recognition on social communication.

The present article, which aims to provide appropriate information and proper support for youth with developmental disabilities, reviews the literature on factors associated with instances of juvenile delinquency that were caused by the youth's developmental disabilities, focusing on what is known about juvenile delinquency in youth with pervasive developmental disorders (PDD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Recent studies have revealed 2 specific risk factors. One is a reflection of the individual's developmental disabilities, and the other is based on influences from the individual's environment. However, emphasizing only risk factors when providing support to youth and their families and guardians in relation to the youth's delinquency would mean that social significance has not been taken fully into consideration. The present authors contend that it is necessary to introduce the role of protective factors, and to focus on the youth's internal worlds, in order to accomplish a more comprehensive study of instances of juvenile delinquency that have been caused by the youth's developmental disabilities.

発達性ディスレクシア (developmental dyslexia ; DD) に関する脳機能研究について概観した. 脳機能研究は, 文字の読みそのものに関わる脳機能の検討と, 読みを支える認知的要因の検討の二つに大別され, 後者はDDの病態解明を目指すアプローチとされる. 我々は後者に着目し, 日本語話者のDDの病態解明に取り組んでいる. 音韻処理に関わる脳機能研究からは, 大脳基底核など日本語独自の病態が示唆される一方, 大細胞系視知覚に関わる研究からは, アルファベット語圏と共通する病態の存在も見出された. これらから, 日本語話者のDDの病態にいくつかのサブタイプが存在することが示唆されるとともに, 今後はサブタイプに応じた適切な治療や教育の選択が期待される.

type:紀要類 (bulletin)

We recorded VEPs elicited with new developed low spatial frequency, high temporal frequency and low contrast visual stimuli (M stimuli) to evaluate magnocellular function in both 8 patients with glaucoma or 5 patients with ocular hypertension and 13 normal subjects. VEPs were recorded from Oz electrodes, and analyzed with complex demodulation methods. Peak amplitudes were plotted as a function of the log of the stimulus contrast. The VEP contrast thresholds were determined by a linear extrapolation to zero amplitude. VEP peak amplitudes with 10% and 15% contrast stimuli were lower and contrast thresholds were higher in glaucoma group and ocular hypertension group (p<0.05). Contrast thresholds of 6 out of 13 patients were higher than the normal range. M stimuli-elicited-VEPs may be useful to evaluate the early functional impairment in patients with glaucoma or ocular hypertension.

We investigated the clinical symptoms of children with developmental dyslexia (DD) and evaluated the relationship between these symptoms and their Hiragana reading abilities. In order to detect the clinical symptoms of DD, we newly developed a clinical-symptoms-checklist (CL), which consisted of a total of 30 yes/no questions regarding symptoms linked to reading (15 questions) and writing (15 questions). Subjects were 98 Japanese school grade (1 to 9) children, aged 6 to 15 years old, with normal intelligence confirmed by the Wechsler Intelligence Test for Children (WISC-III) and they were divided into 2 groups according to their diagnosis. Twenty four children diagnosed as developmental dyslexia consisted the DD group, and the remaining 74 children were grouped in the non-DD group.   CL showed significant construct validity (p<0.05) and inner consistency (reading: α=0.82, writing: α=0.72) after deleting two questions from the originals. The number of questions checked in the CL reading subcategory significantly correlated with the Hiragana reading ability of articulation time in all Hiragana reading tasks (p<0.001). More severe clinical symptoms and lower reading ability were observed in the DD group compared to the non-DD group. Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) analysis indicated that these two groups could be discriminated by the CL and the results of the reading task, and both sensitivity and specificity rate were approximately 80%.   It was suggested that 7 or more positive checks in the CL and 2 or more abnormal scores in the reading tasks might discriminate DD from other conditions which cause difficulties in reading and writing in Japanese children.