Differences in semantic processing speed of mentally retarded and nonretarded persons.
A modified Sternberg choice-reaction time procedure was used to compare differences in the speed with which mentally retarded and nonretarded adults were able to retrieve recently stored information from short-term memory and process permanently stored semantic information. Results revealed that the retarded adults were slower than were the nonretarded adults in both domains of processing; the relative magnitude of "processing inefficiency" exhibited by the retarded subjects was quite similar across the two domains (47% and 57% as efficient as the nonretarded subjects in short-term and long-term memory processing, respectively). This similarity suggests that inefficient processing may represent a fundamental deficiency of retarded individuals resulting from the inefficient execution of some central processing mechanism.
D000328:Adult; D003071:Cognition; D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000523:psychology*; D008568:Memory; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D011930:Reaction Time; D012660:Semantics