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Course Prerequisites:  

Introductory level coursework in cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, and special education.
    Course Description:  

The goal of the present goal is to determine whether individuals with mental retardation are the quantitavely or qualitatively different compared to individuals with average intelligence.

The first formal developmental approach to mental retardation was introduced by Edward Zigler. The first major tenet of Zigler’s developmental approach was the similar sequence hypothesis, the idea that persons with mental retardation proceed, in order, through the usual sequences of development. Research studies showed that persons with mental retardation develop more slowly but in the same order as do persons without mental retardation. The second principle of the developmental approach involved similar structures of development. When matched on overall mental age to children of average intelligence, persons with mental retardation but with no organic damage should show no particular areas of strengths or weaknesses. The third principle concerns the personality and motivational characteristics of children and adults with mental retardation. Zigler highlighted some personality attributes including positive-reaction tendency, negative reaction tendencies, lowered expectancy of success, outerdirectedness, effectance motivation and lower ideal images of themselves.  This approach has come a long way in a short time. The emergence of the area of motivational influences in the behavior of retarded persons has enhanced our knowledge as well as generated many new avenues of inquiry. As we continue to expand our knowledge of motivational, personality, and mental health factors that affect the functioning of retarded persons, the closer we will come to understand the retarded individual not as a cognitive system but as a whole person.

Zigler argued against the “defect or “difference” theorists, who claimed that mentally retarded persons are qualitatively different from nonretarded persons. Various workers of this approach hypothesize that children with mental retardation suffer from one or another specific defect causing their retardation, although they do not agree about the nature of the specific cause. For example, mental retardation has been attributed to deficits in attention, strategy use, cognitive rigidity, or deficiencies in logical analysis and conceptual ability. 

The debate between the developmental vs. the “difference” approach represents basic theoretical conflicts over the etiology of the dysfunction, the relationship of the impairment to cognitive functioning, and the developmental consequences for individuals with mental retardation.

Over the past few years, evidence from persons with mental retardation has been used to further the understanding of normal development and vice versa. This crossing of perspectives from both retarded and nonretarded populations also provides new insights into the nature of the environment, the causes of change throughout childhood, and how certain developmental disabilities disrupt both intraorganismic and external systems. 

All these issues have important implications in identifying, educating, and integrating individuals with mental retardation into society. 


Reading List
 
•    Alevriadou, A., Hatzinicolaou, K., Tsakiridou, H., & Grouios, G. (2004). Field dependence-independence of normally developing and mentally retarded boys of low and upper/middle socioeconomic status.  Perceptual and Motor Skills, 99, 913-923.

•    Burack, J., Hodapp, R., & Zigler, E. (1988). Issues in the classification of mental retardation: Differentiating among organic etiologies. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 29, 765-769.

•    Burack, J. A., Hodapp, R.M., & E. Zigler (Eds.) (1998). Handbbok of mental retardation and development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

•    Burack, J., & Zigler, E. (1990). Intentional and incidental memory in organically mentally retarded, familial retarded, and nonretarded individuals. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 94, 532-540.

•    Cha, K., & Merrill, E.C. (1994). Facilitation and inhibition effects in visual selective attention processes of individuals with and without mental retardation. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 98, 594-600.

•    Detterman, D.K. (1987). Theoretical notions of intelligence and mental retardation. American Journal of Mental Deficiency, 92, 2-11.

•    Dulaney, C.L., & Ellis, N.R. (1994). Automatized responding and cognitive inertia in persons with mental retardation.  American Journal on Mental Retardation, 99, 8-18.

•    Hodapp, R. M., Burack, J.A., & Zigler, E. (Eds.) (1990). Issues in the developmental approach to mental retardation. New York: Cambridge University Press. (especially chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7,11, 12)

•    Hodapp, R., & Dykens, E. M. (1994). Mental retardation’s two cultures of behavioral research. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 98, 675-687.

•    Hodapp, R., & Zigler, E. (1995). Past, present and future issues in the developmental approach to mental retardation and developmental disabilities. In D. Cicchetti & D. Cohen (Eds.), Developmental Psychopathology: Risk, disorder and adaptation (pp. 299-331). New York: John Wiley.

•    Fletcher, K.L., & Bray, N.W. (1995). External and verbal strategies in children with and without mild mental retardation. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 99, 363-375.

•    MacLean, W.E. (Ed.) (1997). Ellis’ handbook of mental deficiency, psychological theory and research (3rd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. (especially chapters 1,2, 5, 7, 8, 9).

•    Merrill, E.C. & Peacock, M.P. (1994). Allocation of attention and task difficulty. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 98, 588-593.

•    Spitz, H.H. & Borys, S.V. (1984). Depth of search: How far can the retarded through an internally represented problem space? In P.H. Brooks, R. Sperber, & C. McCauley (Eds.), Learning and cognition in the mentally retarded (pp. 333-357). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

•    Weiss, B., Weisz, J., & Bromfield, R. (1986). Performance of retarded and nonretarded persons on information-processing tasks: Further tests of the similar structure hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin, 100, 157-175.

•    Weisz, J., & Zigler, E. (1979). Cognitive development in retarded and nonretarded persons: Piagetian tests of the similar sequence hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin, 86, 831-851.

•    Weisz, J., & Yeates, K. (1981). Cognitive development in retarded and nonretarded persons: Piagetian tests of the similar structure hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin, 90, 153-178.

•    Zigler, E. & Bennett-Gates, D. (Eds) (1999). Personality development in individuals with mental retardation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.