Development of Body Image in Mentally Retarded Children

Body image is one of the very important concept for understanding the child's psychological functioning. In our earlier studies, we examined the development of mentally retarded children's body image by means of human figure drawings, and illustrated a closer relationship between the development of motor function and body image. Many handicapped children have difficulty acquiring the body image. This study was attempted, first, to investigate the development of abilities of body image in mentally retarded children by means of three body image tasks, and second, to examine the relationship between the development of abilities of body image on these tasks and their human figure drawings. Subjects were 24 children with mental retardation enrolled in elementary and junior high school classes for children with disabilities. All chidren were given the Kyoto Child Guidance Clinic Infant Development Test. The children's developmental stages as measured on that test ranged from the two-dimensional operational stage to the three-dimensional operational stage. All the subjects were adminstered the body image tests in order to trace the development of their body image. The tests consisted of the task on imitation of other's manual movements, the task on pointing out the parts of self body, and the task on pointing out the parts of others' body. Moreover each subject was given the Goodenough Draw-A-Man Test. The results were as follow: 1) Difference in body image scores among three types of body image tasks indicated the developmental pattern. But, body image scores on all types increased with the progress through the developmental stages from the stage of two-dimensional operation to that of three-dimensional operation. 2) The correlation between the score of the body image task on imitation of others' manual movements and the Draw-A-Man Test score was significant