Keith T. Kernan

Linguistic and cognitive ability of adults with Down syndrome and mental retardation of unknown etiology

The linguistic and cognitive abilities of adults with Down syndrome were compared to those of adults with mental retardation of unknown etiology matched for mental and chronological age. Linguistic data consisted of verbal responses to an elicitation procedure that tested for forty-three different linguistic constructions. Cognitive tests measured simultaneous, successive, auditory, and visual processing. The adults with Down syndrome exhibited significantly poorer linguistic ability than the adults with mental retardation of unknown etiology. Though the two groups exhibited different cognitive profiles, differences in cognitive abilities could not account for the difference in linguistic ability.

Referential first mention in narratives by mildly mentally retarded adults.

Referential first mentions in narrative reports of a short film by 40 mildly mentally retarded adults and 20 nonretarded adults were compared. The mentally retarded sample included equal numbers of male and female, and black and white speakers. The mentally retarded speakers made significantly fewer first mentions and significantly more errors in the form of the first mentions than did nonretarded speakers. A pattern of better performance by black males than by other mentally retarded speakers was found. It is suggested that task difficulty and incomplete mastery of the use of definite and indefinite forms for encoding old and new information, rather than some global type of egocentrism, accounted for the poorer performance by mentally retarded speakers.

Speech and Social Prestige in the Belizian Speech Community

Publisher Summary This chapter presents speech and social prestige in the Belizian speech community. Ones personality can be judged by ones linguistic habits, and social status and prestige among ones peers depends upon the breadth of verbal repertoire, the knowledge of sociolinguistic rules, and the artistry of performance. Within the Belizian speech community itself, the first-learned language of most speakers is some form of an English-based Creole. Broad Creole is spoken by recent immigrants to the city from the surrounding countryside and by their children. To understand a speaker when he throws a phrase, one must share a psychological context with that speaker. City Creole, because of the admixture of English forms, represents sophistication and knowledge of the world that is not implied by the use of Broad Creole with its rustic connotations is a necessary part of everyones verbal repertoire. Some Black American tourists do visit British Honduras, but the main sources of exposure to Black American English are visits to the United States.

Discourse Features as Criteria in Judging the Intellectual Ability of Speakers.

This study was undertaken to identify and describe those features of spoken discourse that native speakers of English consider to be indicative of level of intellectual functioning. Thirty judges listened to eleven narrations of a short film and then identified the speakers as “mildly mentally retarded” or “not retarded” and gave reasons for their decisions. The discourse criteria cited by judges in making their judgments fell into the categories of Detail, Coherence, Story Construction, Storytelling Performance, and Metacomments. The nature and relative importance of each of these categories is discussed.

‛It’s just a dream’: The use of dream narratives by the mentally retarded

A distinction is made in Western culture between the dream experience and the report of the dream to others. As Kracke (1986) observes, it is a commonplace that we know the dreams of others only through their verbal accounts. Some would argue (Kracke 1986) that we know our own dreams only through our verbal reconstruction of them, though those narratives may be silent and internal. It is also a commonplace in the literature on dreams to make this observation and then proceed to discuss and analyze the dream narratives as a dream. Those who see psychoanalysis as hermeneutics (Ricoeur 1970) view dreams as texts to be interpreted. Though the distinction between dream and dream narrative is recognized, and though what is analyzed is regarded as a text to be exegetically interpreted, it is the content of the text that is of interest. And though filtered through human minds with culturally and linguistically imposed categories and constraints, these texts are taken to represent the dream experience itself. In anthropological research, what a dream is considered to be by the dreamer, what dreams mean and what uses they serve, and how dreams are told and to whom, cannot be assumed but must be discovered in each culture in which they are studied. Here too, though the distinction between dream and dream narrative is usually made, the focus is most often on the content of the dream as realized in the dream narrative text, and not on the narrative as narrative. The content or the fact of dreaming itself is examined as to the function it may serve or the role it may play in the culture, and specifically for the cultural meaning it might have for the dreamer cum narrator. The fact of dreaming on specific occasions or the particular content of dreams may, for example, be instrumental in the attainment of a particular status or role such as shaman (Park 1934); necessary to the acquisition of particular forms of power (Hallowell 1966); a way of reinforcing cultural values (Meggitt 1962); or required, as

Use of services for the mentally retarded in the African‐American community

Mentally retarded individuals, their families, and professionals in the service delivery system in the African-American community were interviewed concerning the use of services for the mentally retarded. It was found that African-Americans underutilized available services. Reasons for this included aspects of the service delivery system and features of African-American Culture. Recommendations were made for increasing the use of services.