Cognitive profiles in adolescents with mental retardation.
Use a quick skill-by-skill battery instead of one IQ score when planning ABA for teens with ID.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team tested 30 high-school students with intellectual disability.
Each teen took a full battery: memory, language, attention, and problem-solving tests.
They wanted to see if one IQ score could capture each kid’s real strengths and gaps.
What they found
No two teens looked the same.
One boy had strong memory but weak language.
Another girl solved puzzles well yet forgot instructions fast.
The study showed that a single IQ number hides these ups and downs.
How this fits with other research
Van Den Heuvel et al. (2018) followed younger kids with ID for two years and found the same uneven skills.
Their work extends this 1992 snapshot by proving the patterns stay mixed over time.
Pierce et al. (1994) used the same case-series method for feeding issues and also found unique profiles.
Together, these papers say: test the specific skill, not the label.
Why it matters
When you assess a teen with ID, run short tests for memory, language, and attention. Pick targets from the weakest area and build goals from the strongest. This gives you clearer baselines and better treatment plans than IQ alone.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Cognitive profiles of performance were obtained from a selected group of adolescent subjects with mental retardation (MR) (n = 32; mean age: 15.4 years, S.D. = 3.7) by means of an ad hoc neuropsychological battery. On the basis of each subject's IQ, the experimental sample was divided into three homogeneous subgroups (severely, moderately and mildly retarded) and cognitive performances obtained in the battery tests were compared. Subsequently, in order to clarify the qualitative aspects of MR, the cognitive patterns of subjects with the same IQ and chronological age were examined. Altogether, from a neuropsychological point of view, the results of this study seem to support the hypothesis that MR is a heterogeneous condition of cognitive deficits (some abilities are better preserved than others) and indicate that a set of multiple tests exploring single cognitive functions is needed in order to describe cognitive profiles in MR.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 1992 · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.1992.tb00559.x