title: Body awareness in children with mental retardation.
abstract: The body awareness of 124 toddlers with mental retardation and of 124 children developing normally matched to them on age and gender was examined. Twenty-nine of the children with mental retardation were diagnosed as Down syndrome (DS). The 'Pointing and Naming' Test of Bergès and Lézine [Bergès, J., & Lézine, I. (1978). Test d'imitation de gestes [Imitation test of gestures] (2nd ed.). Paris: Masson] was used to measure vocabulary skills on body parts. Results indicated that (a) the test used is reliable in terms of internal consistency; (b) children developing normally performed better than children with mental retardation on this test; (c) there were no significant differences in performance on this test between genders for the whole group; (d) children with DS performed as well as children with mental retardation of unknown origin on receptive vocabulary. On expressive vocabulary, they performed worse.
authors: University Psychiatric Centre KULeuven, Campus UZ Leuven, Child- and Adolescence Psychiatry, Herestraat 49, 3000 Leuven, Belgium. Johan.simons@faber.kuleuven.be
authors: Johan
authors: J
authors: Simons
authors: Inge
authors: I
authors: Dedroog
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004314:Down Syndrome / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000523:psychology*; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000523:psychology; D011581:Psychological Tests; D014825:Vocabulary