Social evaluation of behaviors comprising three social skills and a comparison of the performance of people with and without mental retardation.

We evaluated whether behaviors commonly taught to persons with mental retardation as part of three important social skills (following instructions, accepting criticism, and negotiating to resolve conflicts) were responded to favorably by other people. People with mental retardation who lived in the community and other people from the community participated in videotaped role plays involving each of the social skills. The performances of participants were scored according to behavioral checklists. Participants with mental retardation scored as well as other participants on following instructions and accepting criticism but lower on negotiating. Community members were asked to evaluate how well the participants did in the videotaped role-play situations. There were high positive correlations between the scores derived from the behavioral checklists and the evaluations of community members for both groups of participants.