Developmental analysis of outerdirectedness in noninstitutionalized EMR children.

Outerdirectedness has been found in nonretarded and institutionalized retarded children to be related inversely to cognitive level and directly to history of failure experiences. The developmental nature of outerdirectedness was investigated among noninstitutionalized EMR children using two independent measures of outerdirectedness. Forty subjects, comprising two MA levels, were given a block-design task that was equally difficult for both MA groups. Glancing from the task was found to be related inversely to MA. On a task in which subjects were scored for the amount of imitation of the experimenter's behavior, imitation was also found to be related inversely to MA. However, imitation and glancing were not correlated, suggesting that they may tap different aspects of outerdirectedness.