Borderline Intellectual Functioning and the Intellectual Disability Construct

Wehmeyer et al. (2008) recently published a particularly instructive paper in this journal on the construct of intellectual disability. The authors carefully distinguished between operational definitions of the term and those intended to describe and explain the potential basis for the condition; the latter they referred to as constitutive. They also discussed a multidimensional model of human functioning as a preferred way of conceptualizing intellectual disabilities, particularly in contrast to those that have been based on biological traits and defects. However, although they asserted that there are differences at the level of construct between the terms intellectual disability and mental retardation, they reaffirmed Schalock et al.'s (2007) point that this does not translate into any difference in the diagnostic process and that “the term intellectual disability covers the same population (as those) diagnosed previously with mental retardation in number, kind, level, type, and duration” (p. 317). The authors...