It is the aim of our study to make clear whether mental retarded children can acquire any purposeful motor behavior or not by being tained in the way of man-to-man method in the swimming pool, though it has been generally reported that seriously mental retarded children could not aquire any such motor behavior.
In the present study 6 mental retarded children, i.e. boy : 3, girl : 3 respectively, who are 7 years to 14 years old, have been trained about 9 times for 3 months, each time for an hour 3 months, each time for an hour. 3 months is a fourth of the period of our training them in the pool.
The results are as follows:
1. 5 trainers report that the mental retarded child in their charge has acquired considerably various patterns of motor behabiour through the traing in the pool, and moreover, been joyful and playful during the training.
2. The rest one reports that the child in his charge has often escaped from him, and showed no sign of developmental change.
3. At the present time, it may be too bold to derive any objective conclusion from our study, but it may be said that 5 mental retarded children have the possibility of acquiring some kinds of swimming patterns.