COMMUNICATION OF PEOPLE WITH MENTAL RETARDATION

理解语言和交流对于理解智力障碍至关重要，因为它们控制、表达或调解我们的三个主要发展领域：智力、社交和身体。由于这个原因，语言和交流必须成为智力迟钝研究的中心焦点。拟议的研究以人类发展的概念化为指导，强调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，这对成功谈判的下一步至关重要，然而，允许一系列重要的后续发展发生。在提议的研究中选择研究的尖端似乎对交际发展过程至关重要，并且代表了各种各样的点（从早期和初级到晚期和复杂）。他们代表了各种各样的人的问题，包括那些智力迟钝的人。它们跨越了智力、社会和身体发展的各个领域，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/或改善智力迟钝的重要方面。我们的计划是使智障人士能够：学习如何展示他们的偏好并在其中进行选择，主要是通过学习区分强化偶然事件（项目一，Saunders & Saunders）；通过发展积极的社会关系，更频繁地将自己置于支持和加强他们沟通尝试的环境中（项目二，Sherman & Sheldon）；学会保持沟通的尝试，直到沟通主要是通过学习进行沟通修复（项目三，布雷迪）；并且，使用语言生活技能来影响他们自己解决问题的能力，主要是通过学习自我指导（Project IV, Baer & Grote）。Hart（项目V）从前几年收集的广泛的语言样本数据库中工作，建议继续增加我们对唐氏综合症儿童和正常发育儿童语言发展之间的异同的理解，主要是通过检查陈述句的发展，因为它们可能与表达性语言的增强有关。

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.