I have a another question about people with profound mental retardation.?

Question

Profound mental retardation describes an IQ below 20. People at this level require total supervision and nursing care all their lives. They can learn little except to walk, say a few phrases, feed themselves and use the toilet. Many have severe physical deformities as well as neurological damage. There is a very high mortality rate during childhood in this group.

I don't understand the part when it says "they can learn little except to walk, say a few phrases, feed themselves and use the toilet". Does it mean that they cannot walk, say a few phrases, feed themselves and use the toilet?

Disregard the "a" before another. I made a mistake.

But except means to exclude: "All the boys went home except Jack."

Then I guess that people with profound mental retardation are smarter than infants. Infants can't do anything at all. At least they can talk, walk, feed themselves, and use the toilet.

Answer 1

They are talking about "mental age" here. The profoundly delayed ("retarded") have a mental age of between 18 to 24 months, wheareas the chronological age is over 5 years, at least.
In other words, a child with a chronological age (number of years after birth) of 5 may have a mental age of 18 months.

Answer 2

All of these numbers mean nothing unless you know what the test was. IQ test results are not freely interchangeable. For example, one of the tests that Mensa use has a maximum possible score of 161, so 187 would be impossible for that test. And therefore it means nothing. You might get 187 in one test and 127 in another and then 107 in a third. I was in Mensa for a few years (I left as I got nothing from it and it was just a waste of the membership fee for me) with a tested IQ of 137. That is still meaningless as I don't know which of the two tests they use for testing was used at the time. All I know is that I was within the top 2% of the population (the criteria for being allowed to join Mensa). IQ scores are meaningless. And so are the broad labels you quoted unless everyone is measured using the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale which is the scale from which those bands are taken in the Wikipedia article. All those who mention Mensa might like to know that Mensa do not use this test they use the Cattell III B and the Cattell Culture Fair III A tests. As well as that, you seem to have missed that part of your own quoted passage that says "was once applied" meaning that it is no longer generally applied and so these words are perfectly acceptable as general insults. Not only that, but many English words can have more than one meaning. Look them up in a dictionary, they have a specific technical, psychological, meaning - the ones you have listed - as well as a more generally used meaning.

Answer 3

Except is the key word. It means that walking, saying a few phrases, feeding themselves and using the toilet is all they can do.

Answer 4

Hello, you may want to surf a great web-site that will have answers to many of your questions. When surfing you go to the on line shopping and surf the books that are available for you to read. Remember there are many levels of retardation and, what each individual can actually do.
god luck,
ls

Answer 5

Person's with this level of disability are still educated to the extent they can be. If the disability includes heart, or other organ involvement that could cause death, not the retardation itself.

Answer 6

No, just the opposite, those are the few things they CAN learn like most people.