This paper views the adaptive behavior of individuals with mental retardation as a coping response to the biological and social demands of the environment. Adaptive skills are contrasted with adaptive behaviors, with skills being based primarily on developing new learning and habituating specific responses. Adaptive behavior represents a more overall quality, while adaptive skills are quantitative achievements which feed into adaptive behavior. One of the problems in dealing with adaptive behavior is the conflict created between the biological and social needs of the individual in such activities as toileting. The role of intervention is to use the individual ecology and the social ecology with which the individual must cope as an interactive force to develop both the inter-psychological and intra-psychological processing that allows for higher levels of functioning. Coping development is the daily visible expression of intelligence, involving sensorimotor development and cognitive development. The need to examine such adaptive behavior factors as rate of learning and social awareness is noted. (JDD)