The body awareness of 124 toddlers with mental retardation and of 124 children developing normally matched to them on age and gender was examined. Twenty-nine of the children with mental retardation were diagnosed as Down syndrome (DS). The "Pointing and Naming" Test of Berges and Lezine [Berges, J., & Lezine, I. (1978). "Test d'imitation de gestes [Imitation test of gestures"] (2nd ed.). Paris: Masson] was used to measure vocabulary skills on body parts. Results indicated that (a) the test used is reliable in terms of internal consistency; (b) children developing normally performed better than children with mental retardation on this test; (c) there were no significant differences in performance on this test between genders for the whole group; (d) children with DS performed as well as children with mental retardation of unknown origin on receptive vocabulary. On expressive vocabulary, they performed worse. (Contains 4 tables.)