Cognitive Development, Helpless Behavior, and Labeling Effects in the Lives of the Mentally Retarded

Weisz, John R.; Bromfield, Richard; Vines, D. L.; Weiss, Bahr

doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-041202-0.50010-9

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…Once defined the person begins to see himself that way and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. In fact, once identified with a special need and placed on an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) that child will actually have that label for a minimum of three years and, as research suggests, emotionally much longer (Weisz, Bromfield, Vines, & Weiss, 1985). I can tell you from experience that I still hold onto internalized notions of my self as a child.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, when a child is identified with a special need and placed on an Individualized Education Plan, he or she will actually have that label for a minimum of three years -and, as research suggests, much longer emotionally. 2 I can tell you firsthand that I still hold internalized notions of myself as a child. I still have trouble seeing myself as smart, lovable, and capable.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Memories from the ‘Other’: Lessons in Connecting with Students

Knestrict¹

2005

Phi Delta Kappan

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Memories from the ‘Other’: Lessons in Connecting with Students

Knestrict¹

2005

Phi Delta Kappan

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“…The present evidence suggests that such effects may not be confined to the adults in the retarded child’s world, but may extend to the child’s nonretarded peers—at least the older ones. This, in turn, suggests that to understand the causes of helpless behavior in retarded children (see Weisz, 1982; Weisz, Bromfield, Vines, & Weiss, 1985), we may need to focus not only on the role of adults, but on that of peers as well. The information that a child is retarded may have variable effects depending on the developmental level of those peers, but one possibility among older children and adolescents may be a set of closely linked attributional and judgmental processes that lead to a condoning of nonpersistence and relinquished control by the labeled child.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children's judgments and attributions in response to the "mentally retarded" label: A developmental approach.

Bromfield¹,

Weisz²,

Messer³

1986

Journal of Abnormal Psychology

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Labels implying deviance or handicap can have stigmatizing effects. However, developmental theory and research suggest that such label effects may depend on cognitive processes that only develop in later childhood-processes such as trait inference and the logical linkage of attributions, expectancies, and behavior prescriptions. To test this possibility, we had third, sixth, and ninth graders watch a videotape in which a child failed a puzzle task; all of the students had identical information about the child's achievement scores and puzzle ability, but half were told that the child was mentally retarded. Consistent with key person perception and social cognition findings, the traidike retarded label had little impact on younger children but strong effects on older ones. Like adults in earlier research, sixth and ninth graders saw low effort as a less important cause of failure for the retarded than for the unlabeled child, and they saw less need to urge the retarded child to persist. Correlations showed no evidence of logical linkages among attributions, expectancies, and persistence-urging among third graders, but strong linkages among sixth and ninth graders. The findings suggest that label effects are mediated by cognitive processes dependent on developmental level. There is ample evidence that labels can activate sets that shape person perception. Labels such as warm versus cold can shape people's first impressions of a lecturer (Kelley, 1950) and their more carefully considered judgments about people in simulated job interviews (Huguenard, Sager, & Ferguson, 1970). The simple information that a child is feeling "under par" can significantly color the descriptions people write of that child's behavior (Rapp, 1965). Labels implying deviance, deficit, or a handicap may be especially important because their effects are often stigmatizing. Langer and Abelson (1974) showed clinicians a videotaped interview with a man labeled as either a job applicant or a (mental) patient. Clinicians given the patient label evaluated the interviewee as significantly more disturbed than did clinicians given the job applicant label. Finer and Kahle (1984) found that people performed better on a highly salient memory test when they thought their partner was a former mental patient than when they had no such information; the people were presumably attempting to cope with, and compensate for, perceived disability of their partners.

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The autistic label and its potentially detrimental effect on the child's treatment

Eikeseth

Lövaas

1992

Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry

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Cognitive Development, Helpless Behavior, and Labeling Effects in the Lives of the Mentally Retarded

Cited by 4 publications

References 76 publications

Memories from the ‘Other’: Lessons in Connecting with Students

Memories from the ‘Other’: Lessons in Connecting with Students

Children's judgments and attributions in response to the "mentally retarded" label: A developmental approach.

The autistic label and its potentially detrimental effect on the child's treatment

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