SEARCH · PubMed Health
Explore indexed PubMed citations for clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health research. Read source abstracts and follow each citation to its original PubMed record.
Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
The prevalence of mild mental retardation in 19-year-old survivors of male births during 1944-1947 is derived from military records. The data are singular in that they are national, virtually complete for a total population of more than 400,000 men and include attributes not previously examined. They allow for the simultaneous use of three criteria: education (history of special schooling), psychometric (Raven intelligence test score), and clinical diagnosis (ICD (1948) 325.2, 325.3), which yielded rates per 1000 of 30,58 and 61, respectively. Rates by all three criteria varied in similar fashion with father's occupation and with religious affiliation. Rates by the psychometric and diagnostic criteria were higher for rural- and urban-born, while rates by the special schooling criterion were lower for rural-born. These variations are presumed to indicate deficiencies in rural provisions of special schooling on the one hand, and a substantive increment in "true" prevalence on the other. Marked variations in rates by province are not accounted for by social class and urban/rural birthplace. A rise in rates in the 1947 birth cohort on the psychometric and diagnostic criteria but not on the schooling criterion is attributable to a scoring change in the IQ criterion. Relative risks are estimated for the psychometric criterion of low Raven test score according to father's occupation, urban-rural origin, and religious affiliation. The overlap of identification among individuals designated by one, two, or three of the criteria is examined, and the issue of labeling is explored.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Children receiving ESN(S) education, attending special day schools, and living at home, were categorized into those whose handicap had been medically recognized in infancy and those of unknown aetiology, 'non-specific'. Information obtained from interviews with their families was used to identify a subgroup of those who were relatively socially disadvantaged. Both factors, medical and social, are shown to have a significant effect on early provisions for special needs. The non-specific cases from disadvantaged families tended to have been recognized at a later age than the rest; their parents had less information, less access to services, and less contact with others who could provide aid and support. It is argued that the theoretical model which distinguishes pathogenic and subcultural aetiologies of severe mental subnormality is inappropriate. It may be wrongly applied by fieldworkers, especially those serving families with a developmentally backward preschool child. The result may discriminate against socially disadvantaged families with a child whose handicap is not medically diagnosed.
Psychological tests were administered to a complete population of severely retarded children aged 0-14, from one area of south-east London. The fifty-six children selected for the present study included all those who had obtained scores on measures of social maturity, visuo-spatial skills not involving symbolic concepts, and level of language comprehension. The results show very low correlations between the age-related quotients obtained for each measure. This suggests that, in severely retarded children, marked discrepancies can occur between different areas of cognitive and social development. Some children could be classified as moderately or mildly retarded on one type of test but as profoundly retarded on another. The profiles on the tests can be related to diagnosis and behaviour pattern. The findings highlight the problems of assessment and educational placement of retarded children.
Seven severely retarded adults from a small rural developmental centre were treated for in appropriate vocational behaviour in the centre's workshop. Target types of behaviour were accurate and efficient performance of three types of operationally defined work behaviour collectively called work skills. Specific inappropriate behaviour for individual residents included chin wiping, inappropriate touching, and eyes off task. Training involved providing instructions, performance feedback, role-playing, and social and monetary reinforcers, which resulted in improvement in all types of targeted behaviour. Follow-up four weeks after treatment was conducted revealed a maintenance of gains on target behaviour.
Consistency of ordering (blocked, random) and presentation method (simultaneous, sequential) were investigated in a multi-trial, free recall task with sixty educable mentally retarded adolescents. In a blocked-simultaneous condition, five groups of three stimuli were presented consistently in the same groups from trial-to-trial as well as simultaneously with three words on a slide. The blocked-sequential condition maintained the consistent ordering, but only one item at a time was presented. In a random-simultaneous condition, stimuli were presented not in consistent, but in changing, groups of three. A random-sequential treatment used both inconsistent ordering and sequential presentation. Results showed that consistent ordering led to facilitation of organisation and recall both from recency and other list serial positions. Subjective organisation and clustering were also enhanced by simultaneous presentation. It was concluded that if one instructional strategy had to be chosen in an applied context, it should be consistent ordering accompanied by simultaneous presentation.
The effectiveness of stimulus delay and stimulus fading procedures was compared with differential reinforcement only in training developmentally delayed children on a concept learning task. Twenty-four children were randomly assigned to one of the three treatment conditions. All three experimental conditions contained five discrimination programmes, each designed to teach the child to discriminate one pair of exemplars from the target concepts bottle and jar. Following successful completion of one training programme, a concept acquisition probe was administered to determine whether the target concepts had been engendered. Alternate presentations of successively different training programmes and concept acquisition probes were continued until the subject passed the probe, failed to complete a training programme, or completed all five training programmes. Five 'stimulus fading' subjects, three 'stimulus delay' subjects, and four 'reinforcement only' subjects learned the concepts. All children who learned to discriminate one pair of exemplars displayed conceptual behaviour after training on two or fewer pairs of exemplars. It was suggested that the absence of pronounced differences between conditions may have been due to the complexity of the task or the type of prompts employed.
This study explored the effectiveness and classroom applicability of a combination of DRO and momentary restraint procedures to reduce the stereotypic responding of four severely or profoundly mentally retarded, multihandicapped students aged 6-16 years. Modifications were made in the application of both of the procedures in order for them to be usable by classroom staff; (a) whole-interval DRO was used with no interval reset contingent upon inappropriate responding; and (b) the momentary restraint procedures were very short in duration (i.e. 3, 5 or 10 s). The results indicate that the combination of these two procedures could be readily implemented by classroom staff without a disruption in educational programming. In addition, in each of the four subjects substantial and relatively rapid results occurred. These results are particularly interesting in that the stereotypic behaviours to which they were applied were topographically very different.
The development of the interpersonal construct system of educable mentally retarded children was studied using three measures: cognitive complexity, construct abstractness and egocentricity. Ten mentally retarded children in the mental age groups of 6, 8, 10 and 12 were compared with nonretarded children of the same mental ages. The mentally retarded children used a limited number of constructs with less abstractness than the nonmentally retarded children. In terms of egocentricity, the nonretarded children used more other-oriented constructs than did the retarded children. For all measures, there were significant differences between the age levels of 6 and 8 versus 12 years, suggesting developmental trends.
Some of the major advances in research over the last 30 years are outlined. While primarily offering an account of the behavioural sciences as applied to this field, some attention is devoted to major biomedical findings which have revolutionized our potential for preventive action. Mental handicap research has been a powerful influence in changing practices.
The psychology of mental handicap has been influenced by two traditions in general psychology, pychometric measurement following Binet and experimental psychology first initiated by Wundt. The weakness of the former is its lack of explanatory power and, of the latter, its lack of sound alignment with the neuropathology of mental handicap. A closer association of experimental psychology and neuropathology might help us to reframe our concepts of intelligence, cognitive functions and their handicaps.
Significant changes have occurred in the United States in the last 30 years relative to the delivery of services to mentally retarded people. This paper explores the development of community service options in the United States since the late 1950s. The development of these new services is viewed relative to concerns with both deinstitutionalization and normalization. From the vantage point of the mid-1980s, the paper also explores the importance of information on the continuum of care cycle of mentally retarded individuals throughout the life cycle as an important guide to the understanding of how the American mental retardation service system functions.