Communicative Agreement between Spoken Utterances and Actions among Persons with Mild-to-Moderate Mental Retardation

This study examined agreement between naturalistic verbalizations and emission of referent actions in 15 individuals between the ages of 20 and 39 years with mild-to-moderate mental retardation. These verbalizations occurred during two conditions: before or after the opportunity to emit the referent actions (Say-do and Do-say sequences, respectively). Within each condition, actions were divided into groups consisting of those that were either of preferred or of neutral interest to participants (as identified by direct care staff and assessed through preference testing procedures). The proportion of communicative agreement in Do-say conditions (95.3%) was significantly greater than the proportion observed in Say-do conditions (52%) (F = 46.02, p < .001), and the proportion of agreement in opportunities involving preferred activities (88.7%) was significantly higher than the proportion of opportunities involving neutral activities (58.8%) (F = 119.35, p < .001). Follow-up analyses revealed that significantly higher proportions of agreement for preferred activities existed only under Say-do conditions (82.7% for preferred activities vs 21.6% for neutral activities)(t = 3.65, p < .05). Implications for practice and directions for further research are discussed.