Auditive discrimination in adults with mental retardation

There is about 40.000 people with mental retardation in. A majority of them are speech and/or language disordered. A review of the research in language deficiencies in adults with mental retardation shows few studies and inadequate knowledge in the subject matter. Very little is actually known about the adults ́ comprehension and production of linguistic structures. People often say "He understands everthing I say" when talking about speech comprehension in adults with mental retardation. A statement with no reflexion on the difference between linguistic and non-linguistic comprehension. To highlight this problem a recent experiment were performed (Wallin, 1996). Five men were videotaped during a testsession. Their comprehension of words and simple sentences showed to be very rudimentary. 21 men and women, who knew the five men well, watched the videotapes and were asked to tell their opinions on testperformance on each item. They scored the performances of the men at random.