Toward an assessment of suitability of people with mental retardation for cognitive therapy

Forty people with mild mental retardation completed five tasks which assessed progressively their ability to identify emotions, link emotions to situations, and select either an emotion given a situation and evaluative belief or an evaluative belief given a situation and emotion. Fewer people passed tasks including a belief than tasks assessing only an event-emotion link. Tasks involving a belief were move difficult if the belief and emotion were incongruent with the situation. We conclude that people with mim mental retardation may commonly have certain requisite skills to use cognitive therapy, yet many may require preparatory training to grasp the concept of cognitive mediation.