College Students' Images of a Motor-Handicapped Child in Japan and Korea

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  • 日本と韓国における大学生による肢体不自由児に対するイメージ
  • ニホン ト カンコク ニ オケル ダイガクセイ ニ ヨル シタイ フジユウジ

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Abstract

College students' images of a motor-handicapped child were studied in Japan and Korea by use of the semantic differential technique. Concepts studied in the present investigation were motor-handicapped child and, for comparative purposes, two other handicapped childen (mentally retarded child and blind child) and three other persons (normal child, old man, and orphan). Originally, the semantic scales were composed of 40 seven-point bipolar adjectives specific to each concept (i. e., person being rated), but in the present study, only 13 semantic scales, consisting of adjectives common to all concepts were used, in order to make possible the comparative study of the concepts. The 13 scales used in this study were Good-Bad, Beautiful-Ugly, Pleasant-Unpleasant, Fast-Slow, Bright-Dark, Strong-Weak, Silent-Noisy, Happy-Sad, Big-Small, Healthy-Sick, Cheerful-Gloomy, Near-Distant, and Light-Heavy. Subjects were 317 students at 2 colleges in Japan, and 105 students at 3 colleges in Korea. Analysis of the data indicated that Japanese college students' images of a motor-handicapped child and of other handicapped children, and extracted factors that predominantly describe the semantic spaces, are as follows: (a) motor handicapped child: slightly slow but strong and cheerful child (factor of evaluation of value); (b) mentally retarded child: slightly slow, but beautiful, bright (as opposed to dark), and cheerful child (factor of evaluation of personality); (c) blind child: rather slow, dark, and silent child (factor of handicap). It was found that while both Japanese and Korean students thought of a motor-handicapped child as a child with trouble in the hands and/or feet who is slightly slow, the Korean students considered the child to be sad and silent, while the Japanese students thought of the child as strong and cheerful. It could be concluded that Japanese students held a rather more favorable image of a motor-handicapped child, although an old and unfavorable stereotyped image of handicapped persons survived in some subjects.

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