Students with mild intellectual disabilities typically exhibit which cognitive characteristic?

Students with mild intellectual disabilities often experience difficulty applying newly learned skills to different contexts. This characteristic reflects a challenge that many individuals with mild intellectual disabilities face in generalizing their knowledge and skills beyond the specific situations in which they were taught.

For example, a student may learn a particular math procedure in one setting but struggle to apply that knowledge when faced with a real-world problem or a slightly different context in school. This may occur due to limitations in cognitive processing, which can hinder their ability to transfer what they've learned to new and varied scenarios.

In contrast, difficulties with social skills and strong verbal communication abilities tend to vary more widely among individuals with mild intellectual disabilities and cannot be generalized as a cognitive characteristic that defines all such students. High levels of creative thinking are also not typically associated with mild intellectual disabilities, as creative problem-solving may be impacted by the same cognitive transfer issues that affect other learned skills.