COMMUNICATION OF PEOPLE WITH MENTAL RETARDATION

理解语言和交流对于理解智力迟钝至关重要，因为它们控制、表达或调节我们三个主要发展领域的大部分：智力、社会和身体。因此，语言和交流必须是智力迟钝研究的中心焦点。该研究以人类发展的概念化为指导，强调了发展尖端的中心地位，即行为，技能，感知或动机相互作用的交叉点，这对成功谈判中接下来应该发生的事情至关重要，但是，允许发生一系列重要的后续发展。在拟议的研究中选择要研究的尖点似乎是至关重要的沟通发展的过程中，并代表了多样性的点（从早期和初级到晚期和复杂）。他们代表了包括智力迟钝者在内的各种人的问题。它们跨越智力、社会和物质发展的各个领域，似乎可以接受现实的干预。因此，我们的研究结果可以直接有助于预防和/或改善精神发育迟滞的重要方面。我们的计划是使智力迟钝的人：学习如何证明他们的偏好，并在其中选择，主要是通过学习区分强化偶然性（项目I，桑德斯和桑德斯）;更频繁地将自己置于支持和加强沟通的环境中，主要是通过发展积极的社会关系（项目II，谢尔曼和谢尔顿）;学会保持沟通尝试，直到沟通主要是通过学习进行沟通修复（项目三，布雷迪）;和，使用语言生活技能，以影响自己的解决问题的能力，主要是通过学习自我指导（项目四，贝尔和格罗特）。哈特（项目五），从一个广泛的数据库中收集的语言样本在前几年，建议继续增加我们的理解之间的相似性和差异的语言发展的唐氏综合症儿童和典型的发展儿童，主要是通过检查的发展陈述句，因为它们可能与表达性语言的增强。

Understanding of language and communication is crucial to understanding mental retardation because they control, express, or mediate much of our three major developmental spheres: the intellectual, social, and physical. For this reason, language and communication must be a central focus of research in mental retardation. The proposed research was guided by a conceptualization of human development that stressed the centrality of the developmental cusp an intersection in the interaction of behavior, skill, perception, or motivation, that is crucial to what should come next in successful negotiation, however, permits a significant set of subsequent developments to occur. The cusps chosen to be studied in the proposed research appear critical to the process of communicative development and are representative of a diversity of points (from early and rudimentary to late and sophisticated). They are representative of the problems of a diversity of people including those with mental retardation. They span the intellectual, social, and physical spheres of development, and seem amenable to realistic intervention. Thus, the results of our research can contribute directly to preventing and/or ameliorating significant aspects of mental retardation. Our plan is to enable persons with mental retardation to: learn how to demonstrate their preferences and choose among them, primarily by learning to discriminate reinforcement contingencies (Project I, Saunders & Saunders); put themselves more frequently in contexts that support and enhance their attempts to communicate, primarily by developing positive social relationships (Project II, Sherman & Sheldon); learn to maintain communication attempts until communication is achieved primarily by learning to make communication repairs (Project III, Brady); and, use language-life skills to affect their own problem-solving abilities, primarily by learning to self-instruct (Project IV, Baer & Grote). Hart (Project V), working from an extensive database of language samples collected in prior years, proposes to continue to increase our understanding of the similarities and differences between the language development of children with Down syndrome and typically developing children, primarily by examining the development of declarative sentences as they may be related to the enhancement of expressive language.