SOCIOCULTURAL HANDICAPPING CONDITIONS

Sociocultural handicapping conditions, prevalent among 65 to 75% of the retarded

population, manifest their depressing effects in specific interactions between
parents or caretakers and children. Like biomedical pathologies they function
directly or indirectly to restrict opportunities for development. Sociocultural
conditions that negatively influence childrearing practices are characterized by (a)
poverty or marginal socioeconomic status of the family, (b) strong abusive and
aversive parental practices, (c) meager and indifferent parent-child interactions,
and, (d) parental value systems and attitudes which conflict with cultural norms.
Child-reading Practices in Poverty Families
It has been long recognized that poverty or marginal socioeconomic status of
families is a condition that generates retardation in children. Recently steps have
been taken in th United States, in the form of Head Start programs, to provide
disadvantage socioeconomic families with educational programs for parents and
educational enrichment programs for children.
Socioeconomic poverty or marginality promotes retardation not only because of
limited physical resources but also because of certain parental behaviors that
correlate with the condition. They included lack of parental support for cultural
practices and negative parental attitudes toward educational and intellectual
achievement.
Limited physical resources. One aspect of the limited physical resources of low
socioeconomic families pertains to limited space, marginal furnishings and
furniture, and absent or minimal utility services. Any of these features can reduce
opportunities for social and intellectual development. For example, in a study
evaluating the physical conditions of homes, which could influence family teaching
practices for disadvantage preschool children, Radin nd Weikart (1967) found that
room illumination was poor in half of the 21 homes visited. Another aspect of
limited resources is the lack of toys, books, musical instruments, and other
educational materials in the home. It has been shown repeatedly that children with
low intelligence test scores generally have fewer play materials at home, and those
available are of limited variety. The second point is of significance in light of a
report by Yarrow, Rubenstein, Pedersein, and Jankowski (1972) who found that
diversity of play and recreational materials is an essential factor in the development

of gross and fine motor behavior, problem solving skills, and exploratory behavior.
The limited physical environment furthermore is inclined to be disorganized and
scheduling of activities is nonexistent or inadequate. This poor utilization of the
families physical resources also correlates with childrens low scores on
intelligence tests.
Lack of parental support for cultural practices. Retarded development among
children of disadvantage families may also be the consequence of meager parental
support for the acquisition of normal social behavior. Studies have shown that
lower socioeconomic class infants display less social play that middle-class infants
on developmental tests or in free play situations. Since the development of social
playdepends upon interaction with people, one explanation for these findings is the
fact that in impoverished homes opportunities for normal parent-child interactions
are curtailed because one or both parents are often either missing or away from
home for extended periods. Bronfenbrenner and Bruner (1972) reported that of
families living in poverty, 45% of all children under 6 years of age were living in
female-headed households whereas in nonpoverty families that figure was only
3.5%. They also found that in two-parent where the husband earned less than
$7,000, 35% of the mothers worked.
Not only are there limited parental contacts in sociocultural disadvantaged families
but the kinds if interactions that do occur are not necessary conductive to the
childrens development of cultural skills and knowledge. As measured by infant
intelligence tests, which are primarily inventories of sensory-motor skills, children in
our society, regardless of socioeconomic background, develop normally up to the
onset of language. At this stage of development disadvantaged children begin to
show progressive verbal retardation. A factor that seem to care for their
verbalizations are qualitatively and quantitatively different. Specifically, the family
circumstances of the lower socioeconomic class child differ in the extent to which
verbal stimuli provide opportunities for identifying and labeling objects and the
frequency of adult models who demonstrate the usefulness of language as a social
tool. The finding by Kilbridge et al. (1977) that these differences are in the
environments of infants as young as 2 weeks of age can be related to data
showing that infants in low socioeconomic status families vocalize less in their
mothers presence than do children in upper that increases in the frequency of
infants vocalizations are contingent upon immediate vocal feedback by the mother
or caretaker and that this kinf of feedback s more reinforcing when an adult is
physically present. Limited verbal interactions between mother and child might also
be related to the finding that socioeconomically disadvantaged children show
significant deficiencies in auditory discrimination.

Another aspect of parent-child relationships among these disadvantaged is the

teaching style of mothers. Studies on mothers teaching techniques in structured
situations show that lower socioeconomic class mothers engage in little didactic
teaching requiring systematic ordering of stimuli verbal labeling, and attention
focusing techniques. In these homes there are fewer opportunities to integrate and
categorize verbal material requiring specific feedback in structured tutoring
situations. As a result a lower socioeconomic child is likely to be less proficient on
tasks requiring language precision and abstractions.
These differences in teaching style have prompted Brophy (1977) to characterize
the mothers instructional methods as primarily reactive instead of a more
diversified proactive approach which relies upon the mothers initiative. One feature
of this reactive teaching style is that the mother is more likely to intrude physically
into the childs problem-solving behavior and give frequent negative comments and
concrete suggestions. Such intrusions keep the child from solving problems
independently and only teach what not to do rather than providing skills necessary
for systematic problem solving. Consequences of the reactive teaching style may
be related to the finding that older children from lower socioeconomic status
families interact less with their mothers and participate less in intellectual activities
than children from middle-class socioeconomic families.
Negative parental attitudes toward intellectual and educational. It is reasonable to
expect, as Sarason (1973) has pointed out, that parents have little concern for their
childrens intellectual and educational achievement when the demands of survival
are omnipresent. Under these circumstances there are few opportunities do occur
they are looked upon as distractions by the parents. Our analysis here is
concerned with the negative intellectual attitudes of parents who are at the
socioeconomic poverty level but above the survival level.
Radin and Weikart (1967) found that the educational achievement of children
suffers under conditions of poverty where parents have low intellectual and
educational aspirations since these parents are unlikely to be effective models for
such achievement, and Kagan and Freeman (1963) found that these parents are
not apt to reinforce academic competence. Recently an article in Times Magazine
(2978) describe the Reverend Jessie Jacksons concern about the negative
intellectual attitudes of low socioeconomic black parents and students and his
efforts to persuade them to make educational attainment a high priority goal.
Abusive Child-rearing Practices
Effects of abusive child-rearing practices are usually discussed in the literature of
emotional disturbances, behavior disorders, and delinquency. They are included
here since strong and/or frequent abuse can produce both behavioral disturbance,

which is judged by a childs level of personal-social adjustment, and retardation,

which is judged by performance on academic and intellectual tasks. Because
strong and frequent punishment creates anxiety and strengthens avoidance
behavior, it restricts opportunities for development in the same way as biomedical
pathologies and sociocultural handicaps; that is, all three conditions limit the
occasions for developing skills, knowledge, and motivations (values, interests, and
attitude) which are required for adequate community living. Furthermore, abusive
child-rearing practices may increase retardation. A child retarded primarily because
of limited opportunities imposed by biomedical pathology and/or sociocultural
handicaps may be retarded further by family practices involving excessive
punishment and abuse. The retarded child seems to be highly susceptible to
behavior disorders (Beier, 1964).
In the previous section on child-rearing practices under poverty conditions, we
pointed out that lack of parental support for normal social behavior and negative
parental attitudes toward intellectual and academic achievement can reduce
childrens opportunities for development. The same may be said about the effects
of child-rearing practices of abusive parents. Observational data taken in the home
show that abusive parents interact with their children very little and tend to
emphasize the negative aspects of their relationships. Negative emphasis is
defined as high frequency of critical comments, excessive demands, and less
compliance to their childrens requests. Children of abusive parents, in turn,
interact less frequently with their parents.
Child-rearing Practices with Meager Interactions or with Indifferent Caretakers
Child-rearing practices with relative meager interactions or with indifferent
caretakers retard development in the sense that the usual verbal and social stimuli
that serve to stimulate, reinforce, and set the conditions for progressive interactions
occur at low rates. In the preceding section we discussed sparse parent-child
interactions that are correlated with poverty and with abusive parents. Here we are
concerned with other conditions that produce similar consequences.
In family parent-child relationships. It has been shown repeatedly that the extent of
the mothers involvement with her infant is the most consistent predictor of scores
on developmental subscale. Infants who have received less attention frem their
mothers tend to score lower on intelligence tests and are less likely to interact
visually and tactually with novel stimuli or mothers who handle their babies only
routinely have infants who spend a significantly greater amount of their time crying.
Conversely, responsive mothers appear to rear responsive infants who cry less
frequently.

Maternal involvement and responsivity have also been demonstrated to be related

to language development. The homes of verbally fluent children have high family
interactions and mothers who encourage their children to use speech. In contrast,
low verbal children are more likely to have been punished for poor speech and to
have relatively few interactions with mothers.
The high correlations between mothers interactions and childrens indices of
development come about because frequent and functional interchanges between
mother and child increase the skills, knowledge, and motivational hierarchy of their
offspring. Take, for example, the development of a childs ability to attach
conceptual labels to objects. Such conceptualizing behavior develops rapidly only
when someone (a) arranges and rearranges stimuli to set up problems, brings
together dissimilar things and points out similarities, etc., (b) stimulates responses
by asking questions, prompting correct responses, etc., and (c) reacts supportively
to the childs responses by confirming correct responses, assisting in correcting
errors, etc. Innumerable interactions of this sort, some very subtle, occur every
hour of the day typical middle-class mother-child relationships.
In institutional caretaker-child relationships. The effects of infrequent and
inadequate contacts between caretaker and child are marked in institutions where
the opportunities for stimulation and development of significant interpersonal
relationships are limited because of insufficient and inadequately trained
personnel. Denis and Najarian (1957) observed children aged 1 to 4 under
conditions of different child-rearing practices in three Iranian child-care institutions.
In the two institutions where the children were markedly retarded in body motor
management and locomotor skills there was a paucity of handling including the
failure of attendants to place the children in a sitting or prone position. In a latter
study in a similar institution, Sayegh and Dennis (1965) reported that appropriate
supplementary experience can result in rapid increases in behavioral development
on the part of environmentally retarded infants.
The effects of institutionalization on language development have been studied by
comparing family-reared retarded children with matched institution-reared retarded
children. Dows Syndrome institutionalized children showed a mean discrepancy of
12 months of verbal mental age, while non-Down syndrome, family-reared,
retarded children showed a 6-month difference. When a small group of these
institutionalized retarded children were moved into residential family units, their
verbal behavior development at a significantly greater rate than matched controls
who remained in the institution.
In another comparison of this sort, institution-reared babies were found to explore
less, to engage in less social pay in test situations and in play with toys, and to

display a high frequency of repetitive play. These findings are consistent with the
results obtained by Warren and Burns (1970) who observed the frequency of
repetitive and object manipulation behaviors in and out of the crib and found more
repetitive (stereotyped) behaviors occurred inside the crib. They concluded that
confinement of this sort interferes with the development of self-help, verbal, and
social skills.
We summarize this section by reiterating Yarrows (1961) conclusions based on a
review of the literature: Child-care institutions are physically, emotionally, and
socially deprived environments which generate retarded development in gross
motor skills, language, and intellectual competence.
Child-rearing Practices with Value Systems in Conflict with Cultural Norms.
Development may be retarded because of reinforcement histories in which
inappropriate behaviors (from the point of view of the culture) have been
encouraged. Such reinforcement histories may occur unwittingly in the sense that
parents or caretakers are unaware that their practices do in fact support
undesirable social behaviors. They may also occur wittingly in the sense that some
parents or caretakers, usually members of a subcultural or minority group, cherish
certain forms of behavior and certain types of motivations that conflict with social
norms. Behaviors that evolve as a result of such parental practices too often
compete successfully with acceptable normative social practices and in so doing
reduce the childrens opportunities to develop culturally acceptable behaviors.
Unwitting strengthening of conflicting behaviors. Just as abusive child-rearing
practices can contribute to the development of inappropriate behavior, so too can
the inadvertent reinforcement of undesirable behavior. Presumably no parent or
caretaker would intentionally encourage undesirable social behavior but such
behavior and finds that attending to it reduces or eliminates it. In the long run,
however, this type of reaction strengthens both the undesirable behavior of a child
and the attending behavior of the parent. A familiar example is the child who
receives attention through crying and aggression. Even with very young infants,
frequent crying can be maintained by differential attention.
When parents give attention for inappropriate behavior it is usually on some regular
schedule which makes the inappropriate behavior difficult to extinguish. One
consequence of this practice is that as parents become inured to the behavior, the
inappropriate behavior escalates in severity and becomes a serious personality
problem.
Certainly not all instances of undesirable behavior develop into behavior disorders.
Crying and tantrums, for example, do not always develop into a serious personality

disturbance. Behavior disorders evolve when a problem behavior becomes a

childs main mode of responding. If a child cries or has tantrums with great
frequency his or her opportunities to learn socially and educationally desirable
behavior are reduced. Another factor to takes into account is that frequent displays
of problem behavior interfere with participation in sustained activities of all kinds,
which, in turn, curtail the development of a childs behavior repertoire. Children
who behave obnoxiously are often looked upon as being unteachable or nearly so.
Consequently, they are functionally in a situation similar to that of children who are
avoided because they are physically unattractive.
Witting strengthening of conflicting behaviors. Childrens behaviors that conflict
with cultural educational practices are often encouraged and strengthened
because of the antiestablishment attitudes of parents who wish to preserve their
own ethnic life style. This generally occurs when certain forms of behavior
associated with the majority in any culture are strongly disapproved of by a minority
group and when the goals of individual achievements appropriate and acceptable
only when they are for the good of a larger social body, such as the family or the
tribe.
CONCLUSIONS
The analysis presents here offers an alternative theoretical fremawork for
integrating biomedical an psychological research in mental retardation. The
prevalent theoretical freamework, which may be describes as physicalistic, hokds
that biomedical research is designed to