Methods of testing children's mental retardation

How do we characterize the so-called intellectual disability in children? Is there a very precise standard to determine whether the intelligence is low and how low it is? The answer is no. We can only say that this intelligence level is lower than that of the average peers. It may be congenital or acquired due to underdevelopment, defects, or disabilities. Today we will focus on sharing its testing methods with you, so that you can have a preliminary understanding of judging intellectual disability in children.

1. Screening method

The examination based on the common intelligence test method often takes a long time, sometimes more than 1 to 2 hours, which is not convenient for general pediatricians or pediatric health surveys, so some simple screening methods are used. The test contents are mostly selected from various classic intelligence test methods. The test only takes a short time and can preliminarily screen out suspected cases. The screening results can only be used as a basis for deciding whether further examination is needed, and cannot be used to make a diagnosis.

The commonly used screening methods in China are as follows:

(1) Denver Velopment Alscreening test (DDST): It is suitable for children from birth to 6 years old. The method is easy to operate, takes little time, uses simple tools, and has good reliability and validity. This method has been widely adopted around the world. my country began to apply this method in the early 1980s. Shanghai, Beijing and other places have standardized the DDST and developed the Children's Intellectual Development Screening Scale (DDST-R) based on the characteristics of my country's society, economy, language, culture, educational methods and geographical environment.

(2) Human drawing test: Scoring is based on the human figure drawn to determine the level of intellectual development. It is suitable for intelligence screening of children aged 5 to 12 years old. There was a trend for younger children to have higher scores and for older children to have lower scores. There is a significant correlation between the IQ obtained from the test and other intelligence scale tests.

2. Diagnostic method

(1) Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-CR): Applicable to children aged 6 to 16 years.

(2) Chinese Wechsler Scale of Young Children’s Intelligence (CWYCSI): Suitable for children aged 4 to 6.5 years.

(3) The Infant and Toddler Developmental Examination Scale (GessellScAleR) is suitable for children aged 0 to 3 years. Adaptive Behavior Assessment Method 1. Infant-Junior High School Student Social Life Ability Scale is suitable for children aged 6 months to 13 to 15 years old.

Through the above information on screening and diagnostic methods, we still need to be cautious in judging whether a child has intellectual disabilities, because some are indeed within the normal range, and their development is a little slower than their peers. With age growth and the influence of external environment and education, they can slowly recover. It can only be said that the results of the screening method are only suspicious, and the diagnostic method is not 100% accurate.