Development of conceptual knowledge in children with mental retardation.
Nine and 14-year-old children with mild mental retardation and children without mental retardation matched for mental and chronological age were first shown a novel category made up of five visual figures. They were then given a recognition test with a set containing the previously presented figures, novel category members, and the category prototype. The relative contribution of prototypical and exemplar-specific information to subjects' performance on the recognition test was evaluated. Results showed that the children without mental retardation employed both forms of information in arriving at a recognition decision whereas both of the retarded groups tended to rely only on prototype information. Use of exemplar-specific information was also found to be positively correlated with IQ and, in particular, with measures of short-term memory span.
Hayes
B K
BK
University of Sydney.
Taplin
J E
JE
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D003210:Concept Formation; D003657:Decision Making; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D004495:Education of Persons with Intellectual Disabilities; D006801:Humans; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000523:psychology* / Q000534:rehabilitation; D007361:Intelligence Tests; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual