THE INFLUENCE OF MENTAL RETARDATION ON MENTAL REPRESENTATION AND MOTOR EXECUTION

Abstract

The study of the cognitive phenomena “mental representation” is a relatively new field, though it is connected to past framework of cognitive psychology and can be attributed to previous research targeted at “brain and behavior.” All researches leading up to this point has been oriented toward healthy or animalistic models, directed toward examining the significance of cognitive functions and its influence on the subject of mental representation. Along these same lines, this research was geared in a similar but newer direction. We tested the contribution of cognitive functions over a group of examinees who are mentally retarded. Toward that end, we used two groups of movements (non-transitive and transitive, from and toward the body). With the purpose of examining the influence of maturation and education, examinees were sampled to be diagnosed with mental retardation between the ages of 16 to 19. The results from the research showed that all the examinees had a significant fall of accomplishments in relation to  the  maximum  possible  correct movements. Also, examinees encountered more problems when given assignments with imaginary objects (transitive movements). Finally, we found that older examinees had better test results than the younger ones.