Yoshihata Hiroyo

失語症の症状や特徴を概説した後、事例を挙げて言語評価のポイントを説明した。

「生活に視点をおいた失語症の臨床」特集の最初に，失語症者を生活の視点からとらえることの重要性について述べた。

失語症者に対するリハビリテーションの概略を示した。

研究パネル国立情報学研究所で電子化

We administerd a questionnaire about experience of practical education to students of our speech-language-hearing therapist course. The questionnaire included fifteen items in four groups. The students had practical training in clinical centers after having had that in the clinic of our University. Except for first-year students, they answered the questionnaire after all practical education was over. The findings of this study were as follows. 1) The students were aware that their knowledge is insufficient before having practical training in clinical centers, and they noticed importance of communication after having had that training. 2) At first their training is performed at our university, and it is performed next in clinical centers. This order increases educational effects. 3) What they learned most is the importance of communication with the people whom they are contact with. 4) It is the importance of communication that was the most impressive thing for them. And they understood the need of knowledge and their own immaturity. We think that the students were able to develop both in terms of occupational specialty and sociability by acquiring clinical experience step by step. The characteristics of students changes with the times. It is necessary to change training methods flexibly to meet the needs of students who go to clinical training.

In order to examine the efficacy of an assertion training program for student speech-language-hearing therapists, a 2-day training course was conducted. 26 students participated in the course. Evaluation was carried out using 3 psychometric scales, i.e., Interaction Anxiousness Scale (IAS), Generalized Self-efficacy Scale (SES), and Assertive Mind Scale (AMS). The scores of all the 3 scales were significantly improved after the training. When the participants were divided into 3 groups according to the pre-training scores, in the "high desirability" group, i.e., the low score group in IAS, and the high score group in SES and AMS, the pre-training scores and the post-training scores were almost the same. On the other hand, in the middle score group and the "low desirability" group, significant improvement was observed in all the 3 scales, except for the low score group in SES, whose p value of a t-test was 0.06, which is close to the significance level. It can be concluded that assertion training is effective in reducing interaction anxiousness and enhancing self-efficacy and assertiveness, and is appropriate as a means of supporting students in improving their communication ability.

A computerized visual communication system using iconic symbols was developed as an alternative communication system and therapeutic tool for people with severe aphasia. The system was designed in order to 1) assess and train sentence production ability as expressed in the selection and arrangement of appropriate symbols in a specific order and 2) facilitate a spontaneous communication with one's partners utilizing the system as an augmentative and alternative communication method. The icon vocabulary of PCS (Picture Communication Symbols) was organized hierarchically representing different lexical categories. People with severe aphasia can access the vocabulary by clicking on the appropriate symbols. They can convey their thoughts by retrieving specific icons and arranging them into a serial order in a space provided on the computer screen. Further study is needed in order to verify functional application in the people with severe aphasia.

This study examined the effects of task variability on normal adults' discourse production with regard to quantitative aspects. Seven different tasks were administered to 11 adult volunteers : two types of picture description, cartoon description, recount of a short TV drama, generating a story using three specified words and two types of procedural tasks. The measures of quantitative analysis consisted of five indices that represent quantitative aspects of speech and information conveyed, such as time, total words, correct information units, etc., and eight indices which represent efficacy of discourse that were computed from the five indices. The result revealed that ten indices out of 13 showed significant differences among the tasks. Furthermore, 12 indices showed significant individual differences among the subjects. In order to identify the most stable results, coefficients of variation were compared among the tasks. The TV drama task was identified as the most robust one among the seven tasks. Although the variety of tasks greatly influenced the quantitative aspects of discourse production, each subject maintained individual tendency across tasks.

A case of visual associative agnosia previously reported elsewhere by the author was re-examined in the light of recent theories of visual recognition. This 57 year-old right-handed male had multiple cerebral infarctions which caused visual agnosia. Extensive tests on his perceptual and cognitive functions revealed a following pattern. The patient's visual perception was judged to be preserved because he could accurately copy line drawings of objects and letters, and could correctly choose an object which matches the other objects. However, the patient's performance on the cognitive tasks that utilize the visual modality were disturbed, regardless of the stimulus characteristics, i.e., real objects or line drawings of objects, colors, faces and letters. In other words the patient showed object agnosia, color naming disturbance, prosopagnosia and alexia without agraphia. On the other hand the patient did not show disturbances in auditory or tactile modalities. The patient's symptoms were also different from those of optic aphasia, visual modality-specific naming disorders ; that is, the patient could not categorize visual stimuli based on their function and could not gesture an appropriate pantomime showing how to use a visually presented stimulus. Taken together, the symptoms suggested the patient was a case of a visual associative agnosia based on Lissaure's theory which classifies visual agnosia into apperceptive and associative. Recent development of theories in visual recognition has made it clear that the mechanism of visual agnosia has to be explained by more complex theory than Lissaure's. This paper outlines two recent models of visual recognition. The first one is a functional model for object recognition by Ellis & Young which is based on Marr's idea about multiple object representations. The second one is a Farah's computational model of visual recognition which integrates neuropsychological evidence. The patient was re-examined using these models.