Comparison of Idiom Comprehension of Normal Children and Children With Mental Retardation

This study compared the comprehension of 20 idioms of normal children with children exhibiting mild mental retardation. Sixty-six children comprised three groups: normal 9-year-olds, 9-year-old children with mild mental retardation, and younger normal children matched with the mentally retarded children by receptive vocabulary age. The assessment included both literal and idiomatic contexts with accompanying picture stimuli. The three groups demonstrated high accuracy with the literal contexts. On the idiomatic contexts, the normal children comprehended significantly more idioms than the children with mental retardation, and the mentally retarded children performed significantly better than the younger normal children.

KEY WORDS: idiom comprehension, mental retardation, language development

Submitted on August 14, 1989
Accepted on October 26, 1990

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