Body awareness in children with mental retardation

The body awareness of 124 toddlers with mental retardation and of 124 children developing normally matched to them on age and gender was examined. Twenty-nine of the children with mental retardation were diagnosed as Down syndrome (DS). The ‘Pointing and Naming’ Test of Bergès and Lézine [Bergès, J., & Lézine, I. (1978). Test d’imitation de gestes [Imitation test of gestures] (2nd ed.). Paris: Masson] was used to measure vocabulary skills on body parts. Results indicated that (a) the test used is reliable in terms of internal consistency; (b) children developing normally performed better than children with mental retardation on this test; (c) there were no significant differences in performance on this test between genders for the whole group; (d) children with DS performed as well as children with mental retardation of unknown origin on receptive vocabulary. On expressive vocabulary, they performed worse.