Adaptive behavior of mentally retarded adolescents attending school.

Teachers rated 550 mentally retarded adolescents attending special schools on the AAMD Adaptive Behavior Scale (ABS). Results established the reliability and criterion validity of the ABS for use among school-age students and demonstrated the sensitivity of the scale to variation in adaptive and maladaptive behavior between subgroups of mentally retarded students representing differences in seven personal variables: age, sex, estimated intellectual ability, etiology, place of living, the presence or absence of any mobility handicap, and use of medications.