| Budget Amount *help |
¥1,700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,700,000)
Fiscal Year 1994: ¥700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000)
Fiscal Year 1993: ¥1,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000)
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| Research Abstract |
This report describes basic research being conducted to develop an objective test for verbal cognitive functions with event-related potentials in communication handicapped persons, with special focus placed on severely and profoundly handicapped persons.
The following three points were clarified by two studies carried out in the first year. (1) Various ERP components under passive task can be measured and highly applied. (2) The selection condition for the meaningful and the nonsense verbal was clarified in the examination of verbal cognition under passive task. (3) The difference between meaningful and the nonsense verbal was reflected on the N100 - LPC components of ERP.The difference was particularly pronounced in components after P300.
On the basis of these results, the following points were clarified from research conducted on normal persons and on severely and profoundly handicapped persons in the second year. In normal persons it was found that N400 did not appear in meaningful verbal, but that P300 and LPC did.
Conversely, P300 and LPC did not appear in the nonsense verbal, but N400 did. In addition, when severely and profoundly handicapped persons were classified into a good verbal understanding ability group and a poor ability group, it was clarified in the good ability group that N400 did not appear in meaningful verbal, but that P300 and LPC did, just as was demonstrated by normal persons; and that N400, which appeared in normal persons, did not appear in nonsense verbal. On the other hand, a distinct ERP component was not obtained in the poor ability group.
These study results suggest that the verbal cognitive function can be objectively viewed in severely handicapped persons and other such people who have extremely limited means of communication by observing the behavior of N100, P200, P300, N400, and LPC components of ERP.
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