ABSTRACT
Since 1990, my colleagues and I have conducted research and model demonstration projects to define, examine, and promote selfdetermination for people with mental retardation. Our research began at the end of an eventful era in the emergence of theories of personality as they relate to people with mental retardation. Switzky (1997) observed the following:
Over the past 30 years there has been a veritable explosion of research on persons with mental retardation that has described the complex interplay of personality and motivational processes within a developmental perspective. This new conceptualization of mental retardation is consistent with mainstream psychological thought concerning the development of human beings as active problem solvers and reflects the accelerating integration of a psychology of mental retardation and a developmental psychology of human growth for all human beings. (p. 343)
Switzky also noted that conceptions of personality and motivational processes in persons with mental retardation prior to the 1960s:
were only loosely related to theoretical models derived from mainstream psychological thought, and virtually none of the available knowledge was based on any sustained systematic study of mentally retarded persons. Researchers were concerned primarily with identifying
the cognitive deficits that characterized persons with mental retardation, (p. 343)
Merighi, Edison, and Zigler (1990) noted this focus placed inordinate emphasis on the construct of intelligence and its role in the lives of people with mental retardation. Despite evidence that personality and motivational aspects were equally important to positive outcomes for people with mental retardation, “there remained a tendency to overemphasize the importance of intellect in the adjustment of retarded persons” (Merighi et al., 1990, p. 124). These authors concluded “more work is needed on the relationship between IQ, personality-motivation, and life success (Merighi et al., 1990, p. 128).
