mental retardation

At present, the improvement of selfdetermined behaviour in mental retarded people is considered a most valuable educational goal. Self-determination is now the cornerstone of the new vision of disability, and that of the educational services for disabled as well as of research on special education. This article aims at reviewing the development of the selfdetermination movement and the advances in the theoretical and empirical research on this topic in the context of mental retardation.

This study had two aims: first, evaluate a peculiar special population in the false belief task; and second, compare the results with other special populations (autistic and Downs Syndrome population).  The task involved their ability to correctly understand memory / reality situations and also the ability to infer mental states of others. The findings support a mentalazing deficit for the experimental population. The results suggest that theory of mind deficit is not a singular deficit for autistic people.

Key words: Mental state, Inference, Mental retardation, False belief.