Regardless of ability level or chronological age, communication and social skills remain the primary challenges in the education of persons with mental retardation. The pragmatic function of language is potentially a performance area of particular importance in that it integrates interpersonal and language capacities into the social aspects of communication. This multivariate study investigates nonverbal pragmatics in students with and without mental retardation at three developmental levels. The data revealed an unexpected degree of commonality in the use of pragmatics between the two student populations with differences related sometimes to the frequency and other times to the inappropriateness of nonverbal communicative functions. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for social skills training, inclusion and community integration.
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