Basic money-counting skills of children with mental retardation.

The thought processes involved in counting and comparing small amounts of money among children and adolescents with Down syndrome (n = 17), other children and adolescents with mental retardation of unknown etiologies (n = 17), and normally developing first graders (n = 15) were examined. Three different tasks that progressively reduced the cognitive demands placed on the children were used. Although not generally different from each other, the two groups of children with mental retardation had far greater difficulties with the tasks than normals. Also, as the complexity of the counting task increased, the number of comparison errors made by the children with mental retardation increased. Based on the findings, a program for teaching money principles to children with mental retardation was proposed.