12 % of all children receiving Special Education services have mental retardation |
1-3 % of the total population have mental retardation |
significantly subaverage intellectual functioning |
deficits in adaptive behavior (across 2 or more areas) |
manifested before age 18 (during developmental period) |
50 - 70 | Mild mental retardation | Educable mental retardation |
35 - 55 | Moderate mental retardation | Trainable mental retardation |
20 - 40 | Severely/multiply handicapped | Severe mental retardation |
25 or below | Severely multiply handicapped | Profound mental retardation |
Intermittent: as-needed, characterized by episodic nature; |
Limited: consistent over time, time-limited |
Extensive: regular involvement, not time-limited |
Pervasive: constant, high intensity, across environments |
Characteristics of Mental Retardation |
impairments in memory, especially short-term |
do not use active memory strategies when they first encounter new information |
benefit from external memory strategies (i.e. moving objects in a particular order as an aid to remembering a verbal item sequence) |
difficulty in generalizing the skills learned in one setting to other settings that involve different cues, expectations, people and environmental arrangements |
lack of motivation |
set low goals to minimize failure |
develop learned helplessness |
use outer-directedness (seeking others to guide them) |
benefit from behavior analysis: Use applied behavior analysis (the systematic collection and graphing of data to ascertain a student's progress toward a specific objective) |
the more retarded a student is, the more functional are academics |
aimed towards independent living |
Prenatal (before birth) |
Perinatal (during birth) |
Postnatal (after birth) |
Chromosomal disorders (occur when a parent contributes too much or too little genetic material) |
i.e. Down Syndrome: 3 chromosomes instead of two on the 21 pair |
occurs 1 in every 600-800 births |
occurs 1:100 when mother's age is above 40 |
hypoxia and anoxia: oxygen deprivation |
PKU, Galactosemia, Tay Sachs Disease |
prematurity, meningitis, head trauma |
social and environmental influences |
poverty (can lead to malnutrition, no immunizations, poor maternal health) |
child abuse, neglect |
Methods |
Learning to complete a job application form |
Learning to use a city map or a telephone directory |
Learning survival words (men/women, entrance/exit, walk/don't walk, emergency, caution) |
Learning to carry on a reciprocal conversation |
Learning to identify denominations of money and to make change |
Equipment that is used to increase an individual's ability to communicate effectively |
A curriculum on self-determination should include: choice making, decision making, problem solving, goal setting and attainment, self-observation, evaluation and reinforcement, internal locus of control, positive attributions of efficacy and outcome expectancy, self-awareness, self-knowledge |
occurs in separate resources rooms and programs |
teaches basic academic and social skills |
provides intensive programming in reading, math, and language arts |
tutorial assistance |
alternative ways of achieving goals |
developing learning strategies |
emphasizes the life-skills preparation |
identifies expectations of the environments where students will live, work, and play after they leave school |
teaches skills that prepare them to function successfully in those environment |