THE RELATIONSHIPS AMONG NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL FUNCTIONING, ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR AND PERSONALITY FUNCTIONING IN MILDLY RETARDED CHILDREN

This study explores the relationships between neuropsychological functioning, adaptive behavior and psychological adjustment/personality functioning in mild/borderline retarded children. The relationships between these areas of functioning and intellectual functioning were also considered. Forty-six mild/borderline retarded children, seven to fourteen years old, were given the Nebraska Neuropsychological Evaluation Battery (NENE) and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised. Their parents were interviewed using the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales and completed the Personality Inventory for Children. As a group, the mild/borderline retarded children are functioning at a moderately low adaptive level. Both the NENE and the WISC-R were found to provide information relevant to adaptive behavior. Children who obtained poor scores on specific neuropsychological and intellectual subtests are described by their parents to have lower adaptive skills than those children who perform more adequately on the neuropsychological and intellectual tasks. The common variance between neuropsychological functioning and intellectual functioning appears to account for many but not all of the relationships found between the NENE subtests and the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales. The relationships between the Vineland Daily Living Skills measure and the Nebraska Neuropsychological Evaluation Battery appear to be relatively independent of intellectual functioning. As a group, the retarded children are functioning within the normal range on most content areas of the Personality Inventory for Children (PIC). The largest number of significant correlations between NENE subtests and PIC scales was for PIC Developmental, Delinquency, Intellectual Screening and Hyperactivity scales. Again, many of these relationships could be accounted for by means of their common variance with intellectual functioning. Though many significant correlations were found in this study, the amount of variance in adaptive behavior accounted for by neuropsychological functioning is relatively small. Neither neuropsychological or intellectual assessment can substitute for more direct evaluations of how a child copes with the demands of daily living