Vigilance performance of mildly mentally retarded adults.
Mildly mentally retarded adults were compared on both an auditory and a visual vigilance task with subjects having greater than average intelligence. Contrary to results reported by Semmel (1965) using a visual task, no difference was found in the rate of decline of performance between the two groups in either of the two tasks, although overall performance of the above-average group was superior to that of the retarded group. The results offered no support for the hypothesis that mentally retarded persons suffer from a more rapid decay in arousal under conditions of reduced sensory variation. Nor did they support a suggestion that in this particular situation retarded subjects would demonstrate more inattention than would nonretarded subjects.
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001143:Arousal; D001288:Attention; D001307:Auditory Perception; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014796:Visual Perception