Quantitative and Qualitative Analyses of Moral Reasoning in Children, Adolescents, and Adults of Similar Mental Age

Abstract

Mentally retarded adolescents and adults and nonretarded first graders, all of comparable mental ages, were administered moral judgment tasks. Although the overall pattern of response was generally similar across groups in dealing with actor size, intent, and consequence of portrayed vignettes, retarded adults did give more positive ratings to smaller than larger actors and gave significantly more positive ratings to situations involving negative intent than retarded adolescents and first graders. The three groups were also comparable in their resolutions of dilemmas involving authority, peer, and altruism choices. The importance of considering variables other than IQ or mental age (MA) in research is discussed. The findings are presented as a basis for an alternative way to approach assessing the social cognitive development of retarded populations.