PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

R B Dever

Publications and source records attributed to R B Dever.

8 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2000

Mental retardation and sentences for murder: comparison of two recent court cases.

Several states and the United States have laws that exempt persons who have mental retardation from the death penalty and other severe sentences. Two recent murder cases in Indiana, which has such a law, illustrate some of the problems in applying it. The characteristics of the two defendants were quite similar, but one defendant was found to have mental retardation and was exempted from the death penalty and the other was not. The disparity was attributed to differences in the assessment of adaptive behavior and to general stereotypes of people who have mental retardation. Equal application of sentencing limitation laws requires greater involvement of professionals with specialized training and experience in mental retardation.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Defining mental retardation from an instructional perspective.

A definition of mental retardation developed under the aegis of the instructional paradigm was presented. Its purpose and use is to (a) clarify the task of personnel who work with persons who have been identified as mentally retarded and (b) provide a concept that unifies apparently discrete instructional constructs. This definition can also help mold the perceptual patterns of young persons entering the field by establishing expectations that focus on the provision of instruction.

Curriculum↗
PubMed1975

Language performance of educable mentally retarded and normal children at five age levels.

The present study comprised an analysis and comparison of the language performance of educable mentally retarded and normal children at mental age levels six through 10 years. Both syntactic and functional performance variables were investigated. The results indicate language performance differences between the two groups with the primary discriminators being hesitation phenomena (false starts, filled pauses, and repeats) and clausal constructions (relative and subordinate clauses), resulting in a higher sentence elaboration level for normal children.

Age Factors↗