Characteristics of the Conditional Reasoning of Educable Retardates

Abstract

A pictorial conditional reasoning test was administered to three crosssectional groups of educable mentally retarded (EMR) children and adolescents. The test items varied according to principle of inference and type of content. An analysis of variance of the number of correct judgments showed a significant main effect for principle of inference. On the other hand, the expected differences for age group and type of content were not found. An examination of the explanations associated with correct and incorrect judgments revealed that retardates' reasoning strategies were congruent with those reported for younger normals in previous studies. The results are discussed in terms of contemporary conceptions of mental retardation and education for the retarded.