Patterns of Behavior, Cognitive Competence, and Social Status for Educable Mentally Retarded Children

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Abstract
A cluster-analytic technique was used to identify 10 groups of children (from 208 educable mentally retarded children attending self-contained special education classrooms), each group having similar profiles on the following characteristics; peer and teacher ratings of cognitive competence and behavior, social acceptance, toleration, and social rejection. Patterns of cognitive and behavioral characteristics were examined as they occurred with various social statuses. Although rated similarly by peers and teachers on cognition and behavior, the resulting social status for some children was quite different, ranging from acceptance to rejection. Also, within a subset of profiles characterized by social acceptance (or toleration or rejection), great variability in patterns of cognitive and behavioral characteristics was evident. The descriptive techniques used in this paper are suggested as a valuable alternative to other commonly used data-analysis methods.