[Study on the details of the children who require special support education in the regular classroom]

The purpose of this study is to clarify details of children who have special supportive educational needs in the regular classroom environment and to reveal the result of their health check-ups at 1.5 and 3 years of age. Between April 2004 and March 2005, 503 students from regular classes visited with their parents to the education support center as a result of behavioral or learning problems. In addition to checking the developmental history of each case, behavior observation and intelligence test (WISC III ) were completed by clinical psychologists. Parents of 258 children who requested make interviews with medical specialists were subsequently interviewed independently for one hour. The parents were given advice depending on the results of both the examinations and reports by clinical psychologists. Interviews and reports including developmental history, behavior observation, intelligence test results and school records were summarized by the authors (medical specialists and a teacher from a handicapped school). Among these children, 171 were diagnosed with developmental disorders, 103 had high function pervasive developmental disorders (HFPDD), 75 had mental retardation (MR) including borderline intelligence, and 26 had both autism and MR. Furthermore, 24 children were diagnosed as AD/HD and 23 as having a learning disorder (LD). Although some developmental problems had been identified in half of the children with autism at 1.5 or 3 years of age, they had not been followed up sufficiently. Further, few children with LD or AD/HD had been identified during health check-ups. These results suggest that we should reconsider the health check-ups system for the children with LD and AD/HD as well as autism and establish a follow up system for them.