An Analysis of the Psychosomatic Development of Rural School Chidlren

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to clarify the characteristic of the psychosomatic development in rural school children, analyzing the distributions of the phonating and tapping reaction times to tone click stimuli at irregular intervals.The distribution of the reaction time was described in the form of integration curve of the percentages of total trials in successive reaction time intervals in each grade and sex group. In 1971 and 1972, we investigated the reaction times of the children in three primary and junior high schools of mountain villages in Gumma Prefecture.The results could be summarized as follows:1) The psychosomatic development of rural children would show a marked increase between the 1st grade and the 3rd grade in primary school and, moreover, between the 5th grade in primary and the 1st grade in junior high school.2) The psychosomatic development in rural children was inferior to that in urban children, especially in the primary school times, probably due to the influence of the rural living environment, where external artificial stimuli were less. This delay in the psychosomatic development in rural children was more remarkable in girls than in boys.3) The tapping reaction time was always shorter than the phonating reaction time in all stages of growth both of rural and urban children.