ASSESSING SAME DIFFERENT JUDGMENTS IN INDIVIDUALS WITH SEVERE INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES - A STATUS-REPORT/

This report summarizes state-of-the-art approaches for assessing visua l stimulus same/different judgments in individuals with severe intelle ctual disabilities. Methods are described that permit one to conduct a ssessments on a population-wide basis, excluding few if any participan ts due to failure to acquire necessary baseline performances. Methodol ogical investigations summarized here indicate that one can obtain rel iable same/different judgments with a variety of stimuli in virtually anyone for whom a basal score on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test c an be obtained. This approach includes judgments involving not only fa miliar, readily nameable stimuli, but also abstract two-dimensional fo rms of the type commonly used to minimize extraexperimental influences on performance. Taken together recent findings lead to the conclusion that past studies have significantly underestimated the capacity of p articipants with law MA scores to make same/different judgments. They also suggest a more general methodological approach that can potential ly lend to more sensitive assessment of other behavioral capacities in this difficult-to-test population. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.