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For every 100 individuals with a Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), 50 to 60 are also mentally retarded. As awareness of the co-occurrence of these two conditions has grown, the need for a specific approach to screen mentally retarded individuals for PDD has become apparent. The PDD-MRS fills the urgent need for an instrument specifically designed to identify PDD in individuals of all ages with mental retardation of all levels of functioning (particularly the more severe levels).
The 12-item PDD-MRS can be administered and scored by a psychologist or worker with experience in the field of both mental retardation and autism in just 10 to 20 minutes. It focuses on current behavior observed during the past 2 to 6 months, and scores may be assigned based on either direct or reported observations. Cooperation from the subject is not required. Because no special training is necessary to use the PDD-MRS, it is ideally suited for use in clinical practice. It has been used in schools, community group homes, and day care centers in order to screen for the presence or absence of PDD and identify individuals in need of a more complete diagnostic evaluation.
The PDD-MRS was standardized on a sample of 1,230 subjects (8 through 66 years of age) from the Netherlands and Belgium. Reliability and validity measures have been confirmed by over a decade of research and use.
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