Mental Retardation Tasks facing early professi

Tasks facing early professionals working in mental retardation differed from those facing mental retardation professionals today. The area called multicultural studies, or the subject dealing with multiculturalism, has called attention to the cultural diversity inherent in a changing population. Cultural diversity is a difficult and complex matter for professionals working in the field of mental retardation. Before dramatic population shifts in the culture, i.e., recent waves of non-English speaking immigrants, mental retardation professionals were less attentive to cultural differences which today are thought to make the evaluative process more complex.

Assessment bias is an area in which one has to be especially careful when dealing with a multicultural population. For example, how much of a client's learning difficulty is due to some organic deficiency, and how much is simply due to cultural differences? Does the client think in English, or the native language? If the client is a child, does he or she tend to think in more than one language, easily making the transition from one to the other? If an adult, does the client experience interference between the native language and an adopted tongue? These are just some of the questions that serve to make the mental health professional's job more complex in the present. If professionals are using diagnostic screening tests, it is exceedingly important that assessment bias not be allowed to enter the diagnosis.

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there are only a handful of scientifically documented cases of idiot savant syndrome, yet it is significant to our discussion here, because these rare individuals show that a person can be totally lacking in nearly all areas, and yet exhibit genius in one--highly specialized--other area. Some of these individuals are deaf and blind, and yet they can still create wondrous works of art, or they are human computers who can do calculations which appear humanly impossible. Some idiot savants can hear a piano concerto, and reproduce it note-for-note--sort of like a human tape recorder. The point to be made here, by this extreme example of idiot savant syndrome, is that the human brain tends to compartmentalize itself. We know this to be true when we refer to some people as left- or right-brain thinkers. We should always be open to the possibility that a client who appears retarded in general, may, in fact, be gifted in some other area. Such "miracles" should serve as signposts that perhaps we do not always "know it all" when it comes to mental retardation assessment. Mental retardation professionals, and educators in general, are aware that the I.Q. test, as it has been historically administered, is a best-kept extinct dinosaur

Category: Psychology - M