ABSTRACT
Mental retardation is a social concept that is usually measured in terms of deficits in cognitive skills as reflected, for example, in IQ and adaptive behavior tests. However, individuals with mental retardation also tend to exhibit various performance deficiencies in motor skills when compared to chronologically age-matched individuals of average or above intelligence. For example, it is common to find individuals with mental retardation exhibiting slowness of movement, clumsiness, stereotypic behavior, low levels of motor performance, slow rates of motor skill acquisition, and the failure to generalize motor skills across changes in context and task constraints. These abnormal movement phenomena and performance deficiencies associated with mental retardation have stimulated considerable research (cf. Anwar, 1981; Berkson, 1967; Bruininks, 1974; Henderson, 1986; Nettelbeck, 1979; Newell, 1985a; Wade, Hoover, & Newell, 1983), although there has never been, and there is not today, a unifying or even predominating theoretical approach to the study of motor skills and mental retardation.
