EDST 391 Intelligence in Everyday Life
Name:
Date:
"Calendar"
P/F Writing
Assignment for Day 12
Mental retardation
Readings:
- Koegel
& Edgerton ("Black 'six-hour retarded children' as
adults")
- Kenney
("When one falters...")
- Matarazzo
("Degrees of mental retardation")
- NBC
video ("The struggle to be normal--fitting in")
Note: SSI = Supplemental Security Income. These are monthly support payments
from the Social Security Administration to people with disabilities.
In today's readings, you will be getting an up-close-and-personal look at
what it is like to function at the low end of the IQ bell curve. Koegel &
Edgerton provide a good summary of the adult lives of one group of mildly
retarded individuals in the United
States. Let's try to extract some patterns
from these case studies.
- We saw in earlier
readings that many job duties that involve dealing with people are
complex and g loaded. However, some of the retarded adults in the
Koegel and Edgerton study seemed to do very well interpersonally. Are
these two findings contradictory? Look carefully at the kinds of social
skills these more socially successful individuals possessed. First, which
social specific social skills did they have--and not have? Second, were
some of the "skills" actually personality traits? You
might wish to look again at the list of "big
five" personality traits.
- Some of the retarded adults
were definitely “making it.” Does this contradict your earlier readings’
claim that low-IQ individuals are hobbled in life due to low IQ? Also,
what did “making it” mean, and how secure was it? Please also draw from
the Kenney article in answering this question.
You
signed up to represent or “be” one of the individuals in the readings. Be
prepared to discuss this person’s life.