Mental Retardation and Child Development

There are general stages children pass through as they develop and certain time frames during which these transitions occur. There is not a specific time that is considered normal for any individual child to attain a goal, as cultural and environmental factors are also important to development, but researchers have formed general, broad ranges of time in which skills such as walking and talking are displayed. Children with disabilities or delays may follow different paths of development. Children with mental retardation have been found to pass through typical stages of development, such as Jean Piaget’s stages of cognitive development, but at a much slower rate. Burack, Hodapp, and Zigler (1998) however, contrast the idea that slowness is the only characteristic of mentally retarded people to be considered, by introducing the study of mental retardation as a “more complex enterprise” (p. 3). Today, as a result of recent advancements in the past 50 years (Hodapp, and Zigler, 1986, p.3), researchers know more about the development of persons with mental retardation and about the phenomenon in general. The work of three influential developmental theorists has laid foundations for the current study of mental retardation: Heinz Warner, Jean Piaget, and Lev Vygotsky (Burack et al., 1998, p.3). Heinz Warner, while studying at the Wayne State Training School, developed three ideas that he applied to persons with metal retardation. First, he realized that “behavior reflects underlying thoughts” and that sometimes individuals with mental retardation would perform better on perceptual and cognitive tasks than individuals with normal intelligence because the retarded individuals had not yet learned the rules that governed their behavior (Burack et al., 1998, p. 4). His second idea was that there existed two forms of mental retardation: exogenous and endogenous. Individuals with exogenous retardation (brain damage) showed “unclear and inconsistent” patterns of

Cited: *American Association on Mental Retardation, (2005, March 11). Definition of mental retardation. Retrieved October 27, 2006, Web site: http://www.aamr.org/Policies/faq_mental_retardation.shtml *Burack, J, Hodapp, R, & Zigler, E (1998) *Carrol, Brian (2006). Mental Retardation. Retrieved October 29, 2006, from P. Buckley Moss Foundation for Children 's Education Web site: http://www.mossfoundation.org/page.php?id=46 *Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, (2005, October 29) *Children 's Defense Fund, (2003). Retrieved October 27, 2006, from Fact sheet Web site: http://cdf.convio.net/site/DocServer/keyfacts2003_childcare.pdf?docID=580 *National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities, (2004) *NYU Child Study Center, (2006). Disorder Guide: Mental Retardation. Retrieved October 29, 2006, from NYU Child Study Center Web site: http://www.aboutourkids.org/aboutour/disorders/mental.html *U.S *Zigler, E, & Hodapp, R (1986). Understanding Mental Retardation. Cambridge: The Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge.