Can You Drive? -- an Adaptive Test of Intelligence

                                        Robert J. Weinstein

     PhD. thesis idea #321, 03/21/87



     Since the Stanford-Binet was first published in the United States, the
     sine qua non of I.Q. testing has been vocabulary.  The Raven matrices
     and the Kohs block design, both of which are commonly thought of as
     requiring minimal verbal skills and which appear to measure abstract
     thinking abilities have long demonstrated high correlations with tests
     of verbal intelligence.  Edgar Doll's work, including the Vineland
     Social Maturity Scale led to the inclusion of adaptive behavior in
     considerations of intellectual capabilities.  This basic concept
     (adaptive behavior) of psychology [with thanks to Ann Boehm] was
     formally codified in the AAMD definition of mental retardation which
     roughly states: significantly subaverage general intellectual
     functioning which occurs within the developmental period and which is
     associated with deficits in adaptive behavior.


     I work as a senior psychologist in a 100 bed residential treatment
facility; I work in an institution.  It (the Rockland Multiply Disabled
Unit) is operated under the auspices of Letchworth Village Developmental
Disability Services.  I am an employee of N.Y.State's Office of Mental
Retardation and Developmental Disabilities.  My unit, we call it "the MDU",
is located on the grounds of a suburban (N.Y.S. Office of Mental Health-
operated) psychiatric center.  Some of my clients (I am personally
responsible for 50) are dually diagnosed which means that they have been
diagnosed as both mentally retarded and psychiatrically impaired.  And in my
spare time, I am co-sysop of an extremely large computer bulletin board,
PC-Rockland BBS.  For those of you who "modem", the freeboard number is
(914) 353-2176; N81, 1200/2400 baud, 24 hrs., IBMPC/MS-DOS only.

     I have always wished for better tests of intelligence and I would love
to develop a new one.  The greater part of my vocational efforts over the
past five years has been devoted to the development and implementation of
behavioral programs.  Essentially, I'm functioning as a behavioral clinician
and I think I gotten pretty good at it.  Now, perhaps it's time to move on
in my professional development.  I never completed a dissertation thesis for
Mary Alice White [nb.] and I think I'd like to have another shot at it. Some
of us learn slower than others (I'm almost 40!) and maybe now I have an idea
that I think is good enough.

     My basic thesis is that any individual who has demonstrated the
independent ability to drive a car is functioning adequately in this society
and therefore should not be classified as mentally retarded. Moreover, any
individual who cannot drive a car solely because of their intellectual
limitations should be classified as retarded, assuming that they they have
been given the opportunity to learn the requisite skills, received adequate
and appropriate training (we need better/cheaper simulators) and otherwise
meet the previously specified AAMD criteria.

     Finally, I offer the glimmer of an idea... half-baked so to speak.

 Might I have stumbled over the beginning to a fair test of the right to vote?


                        Whatcha think?

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 w/thanks to C.I., K.P.G., P.C., blondie and Mom
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