Analysis of Mother-Child Interaction in Young Mental Retardates

Employing newly developed observational techniques, the authors recorded the nonverbal and verbal interactions between 6 young mental retardates and their mothers for 36 minutes on each of 2 occasions. Behaviors were analyzed according to their relative status, affection, and involvement components during each 4-second time interval, and patterns were derived by means of contingency analysis. The patterns common to the mentally retarded sample were compared with those derived from a comparison sample of 10 nonretarded 4- and 5-year-olds and their mothers. The patterns of a single retardate dyad were compared with the patterns characteristic of the group to illustrate the effectiveness of the method in highlighting the unique qualities of specific pairs. The study is intended to emphasize methodology primarily and data about the subjects only secondarily.