Borthwick & Crossley: LANGUAGE AND RETARDATION The target article below was today published in PSYCOLOQUY, a refereed journal of Open Peer Commentary sponsored by the American Psychological Association. Qualified professional biobehavioral, neural or cognitive scientists are hereby invited to submit Open Peer Commentary on it. Please email or consult the websites below for Instructions if you are not familiar with format or acceptance criteria for PSYCOLOQUY commentaries (all submissions are refereed). To submit articles and commentaries or to seek information: EMAIL: psyc(a)pucc.princeton.edu URL: http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/psyc.html http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/psyc ----------------------------------------------------------------------- psyc.99.10.038.language-retardation.1.borthwick Sun Oct 17 1999 ISSN 1055-0143 (40 paragraphs, 44 references, 1 note, 762 lines) PSYCOLOQUY is sponsored by the American Psychological Association (APA) Copyright 1999 Chris Borthwick & Rosemary Crossley LANGUAGE AND RETARDATION Target Article on Language-Retardation Chris Borthwick Health Promotion Journal of Australia 333 Drummond St Carlton Vic 3053 AUSTRALIA cborthwick(a)vichealth.vic.gov.au http://www.vichealth.vic.gov.au Rosemary Crossley Victorian Health Promotion Foundation DEAL Communication Centre 538 Dandenong Road Caulfield, Victoria 3162 AUSTRALIA dealcc(a)vicnet.net.au http://home.vicnet.net.au/~dealccinc/ ABSTRACT: The diagnostic link between lack of speech (in the absence of deafness or obvious structural impairment) and mental retardation depends on the premise that behaviour is in general an accurate reflection of internal mental processes, and that nothing is inhibiting the overt production of communication and "masking" more sophisticated language. This premise is not always valid, and the methods for determining whether it is valid may not be the ones now practised in the field of mental retardation psychology. This target article reviews several cases in which people with deafness, physical handicap, and learning disabilities were reclassified out of the category of mental retardation. The recent debate over "facilitated communication" suggests that the burden of proof may lie with those who hold that the actual expressive communication of people diagnosed as mentally retarded does adequately represent their internal language. KEYWORDS: alternative and augmentative communication (AAC), autism, facilitated communication, language, speech, retardation