Mental Retardation

Explain this statement: To some extent, MR is a school-based diagnosis.

Many students with mild retardation are labeled as mentally retarded in the education setting. However, this often does not hold over into other areas of the person’s life. Outside of the constraints of the school setting, the students often behave in a socially appropriate manner, and have no problems succeeding in an occupational setting. Therefore, being labeled as mentally retarded by the school system does not mean the student will not be successful in other venues.

A person with an IQ of 64 nevertheless has excellent social functioning. Is this person rightly diagnosed as MR? Discuss and explain.

Many people with an IQ in the Mild Mental Retardation range are often not considered or diagnosed a person with mental retardation because they do not have adaptive behavior deficits. They may be diagnosed as retarded in the educational setting, but are fully capable of appropriate functioning outside of the school setting and in a social setting. That is why there is a dip in the 55th-70th-percentile range on the Normal Curve of IQ Distribution.

What is the importance in MR of the concept “incidental learning”?

Employers need to know to take the person with mental retardation’s difficulty with incidental learning into consideration when introducing them to their new career. Therefore, it is important for supervisors who deal with people with mental retardation to simplify instructions and training as much as possible to facilitate the ability to pay attention to the multiple aspects of complex situations. Allowing more time can be an effective method to help facilitate the adjustment of a person with mental retardation to their new position.

Will a child with significant intellectual deficit ever “catch up” to peers in intelligence? Discuss and explain.

Because the child with an intellectual deficit will always have the intellectual deficit, then they will always be behind their peers. Therefore, it can be assumed the child will always have difficulty catching up to their peers in intelligence. This happens because the child is developmentally delayed, leaving them with a mental level below that of their peers. Therefore, though they will still learn the new information presented to both the child and their peers, they will learn the information only through the mindset of their mental level, which means they will take away a different and less complex meaning of the material than that of their peers, which is due to their difficulties in engaging in higher-level thinking skills.

Explain, as if to a student, the concepts of “needed support” and “support intensities” and explain their application and process.

Supports are the strategies we will use to help you to reach your individual goals. Depending on your needs, these supports may or may not include peer supports, help with managing your money in order to make sure your bills are paid, in-home living assistance to make sure you are well taken care of, health care, and assistive devices and technologies. The amount you use these supports can vary in intensity, or amount of help used each week depending on your needs. For instance, if you need a whole lot of help, most of the time, you will receive pervasive support, which is daily help where somebody is with you all of the time. If you need a lot of help, but not all of the time, you will receive extensive support, which is regular help only in the environment the support is needed. If you need some help, just some of the time, you will receive limited support, which is help only when you need it and only in the environment you need. If you need support only when you have difficulty with a new task, when you are learning something new, then you will receive intermittent support, which is help only as the new or different situation comes up.