How do the children with mild and moderate mental retardation recognize and comprehend the external reality? How do they communicate their abilities of representation and exhibit their competencies? What kind of Practical skills do they possess? With what practical skills do they interact? These are some of the seminal questions in the contemporary discourse on children with mental retardation. This study is an attempt to grapple with some of the above questions, related to the practical adaptive behaviour of children with mental retardation. In social and domestic lives, the practical skills are important, and this article is to study the comparison of various domains of mentally retarded individuals with different degrees of retardation such as mild, moderate, severe, and profound. To carry out this research work a sample of 60 children with mental retardation are randomly selected, from two sub-populations i.e., mild and moderate children with mental retardation. This article mainly focuses on the practical adaptive behavior of children with mild and moderate mental retardation to their level of mental retardation, gender, level of the parent's education, and years of schooling. This research helped us to identify certain gaps in the existing knowledge. It was found based on the conducted research that the majority of the children with mild mental retardation exhibited practical behavior most frequently by participating in most of the classroom practical activities. It is also very important for us to realize that these children whose exceptionalities and disabilities can also be helped with good suggestions so, that they can lead a happy and productive life. From the analysis and testing of the hypothesis, it is evident that the variable 'gender' does not have any influence on children's practical skills. Irrespective of various backgrounds both the boys and girls are equally getting involved in the different practical activities, this may be the reason for the absence of gender discrimination in this context. It can be concluded that children with mental retardation exhibit delays in all aspects of practical skills management compared to non-retarded children and it is felt that if some verbal and non-verbal prompts are provided, these children can manage practical acts well in familiar situations.
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The association between WAIS subtests and adaptive behavior in mental retardation and borderline intellectual functioning: evidence for ecological validity
