Issues in defining mental retardation.

Abstract

Responses were made to MacMillan, Gresham, and Siperstein's (1993) criticisms of the new AAMR definition. The new AAMR definition does not raise the IQ limit and is not intended to increase the number of people considered to have mental retardation. There is no intent to change who is and who is not considered to have mental retardation. Instead, the intent is to change how people think about mental retardation: The old deficiency model is replaced with a new support model. MacMillan et al.'s criticisms are based on unfortunate misstatements of both the 1983 and the 1992 AAMR definitions of mental retardation and on misunderstandings of psychometric science. On the one hand, they argued that intelligence tests are culturally biased. On the other hand, they criticized the AAMR for not making greater use of inflexible IQ cutoffs in defining mental retardation. They misunderstood that cultural bias is an argument for, not against, flexibility in the interpretation of intelligence tests.