Sex knowledge and attitudes of moderately retarded males

In semistructured interview sessions, 18 moderately retarded men undergoing deinstitutional training, were questioned to determine their understanding of pictures of homosexual embrace, masturbation, dating, marriage, intercourse, pregnancy, childbirth, drunkenness, and their knowledge of anatomical terminology. The frequencies of various response categories revealed a range of comprehension, the lowest answering only 10 percent correctly, the median consisting of 28 percent correct, and only 1 subject correctly answering as many as one-half of the items. Correct conceptual responses significantly correlated with WAIS Full Scale and Verbal IQs and were also significantly related to the Adaptive Behavior Scale domains of Language, Socialization, and Responsibility. Serious errors of fact and conceptual confusion, though most prevalent in responses by the low comprehenders, were found in at least some responses by all of the men.