Color Blindness in Mentally Retarded Children
Recent studies of mentally retarded children have found substantially higher rates of color blindness than are usually reported for the general population. In 2 of these studies, sex differences in color blindness, invariably found in intellectually normal children, do not appear. Reanalysis of data from one of the studies of retarded children suggests the possibility that the high rates arise from the difficulty in comprehending the test and following the directions rather than from faulty color vision. However, even if the number of color blind retarded children is actually lower than these studies show, the need for research on this topic seems apparent. Using color dependent instructional materials with color blind, mentally retarded children may be detrimental.