精神薄弱兒의 認知發達에 관한 硏究의 考察

A Review of Research on the Cognitive Development of the Mentally Retarded Children

  The developmental theory of Jean Piaget describes intellectral growth, from sensory-motor intelligence to adult logic. Although Piaget did not dealt with the mentally retarded children, his theory has been applied to those children by many researchers.   Inhelder(1968) proposed a method to order adult retardates according to Piaget"s developmental stage. In this classificatory system, idiot is viewed as fixed at the level of sensorimotor intelligence; imbecile is seen as incapable of surpassing the pre-operational stage; moron is seen as unable to progress beyond concrete operational stage; and the borderline adult is seen as able to use only the simple kinds of formal operational tasks. Hood"s study(1962) on the montally retarded supported Piaget"s notion of stage in the development of number concepts. Lister(1972) studied the development of educationally subnormal children"s understanding of conservation, and then this study results supported that conservation skill can be taught to retarded subjects.   McManis(1969) reported that retarded subjects showed a marked delay in transibity development. This finding is inconsistent with Piaget"s hypothesis that conservation and transibity occur together. Stephens(1966) concluded in his study that conservation of weight was more difficult than conservation of water, and the latter was more difficult than conservation of number for both the mentally retarded and normal subjects. And also. conservation of inequality was less difficult than conservation of equality for all kinds of concepts.   As shown above, these results of investigations into the application of Piaget"s stage-theory of development indicate that the stage of development in the mentally retarded. paralled those described by Piaget, but appear at latter chronological periods.   The fact that people can change and the notion of educability of intelligence have dominated the thinking of those advocating cognitive-based training problems for the mentally retarded. And because of the treamendous variability in cognitive of the mentally retarded task performance with in IQ categories, identification of specific aspects of concept learning holds promise for enhancing the school performance of the mentally retarded children through individualized instruction.