Abstract
To test the hypothesis that mentally retarded persons exhibit identifiable styles of social grouping, the size and sex composition of spontaneous social groups were studied in 570 mentally retarded and 3,030 nonretarded persons from preschool-elderly ages. Both populations showed similar developmental trends: group sizes increased through childhood, decreased thereafter until middle age, and increased again in the elderly. However, mentally retarded persons formed smaller groups at all ages: solitary individuals predominated with few groups larger than dyads. A subgroup of lower-functioning retarded persons formed even smaller groups. Nonretarded females were more aggregative than males, but mentally retarded persons showed no such sex differences.
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