Accessing mental representations of mentally retarded children

The feasibility of using multidimensional scaling analyses (INDSCAL) of similarity data as a heuristic for discovering how retarded children psychologically represent stimuli was explored. Similarity judgments of all possible pairs of six basic colors were obtained from TMR children, nonretarded children, and adults. Judgments were elicited using several experimental tasks. Overall scaling solutions representing perceived relationships among the stimuli revealed a space consisting of the familiar "color wheel." Solutions were very similar across groups as well as across tasks. We concluded that multidimensional scaling of similarity judgments is a useful tool for determining how retarded individuals represent their world.