Episodic priming in children with learning disabilities

Abstract

Previous research has consistently demonstrated that children with learning disabilities experience greater difficulty than nondisabled children in their attempts to learn new associations (e.g., Lorsbach & Worman, 1988). The present experiment used a traditional cued recall task, as well as an item recognition priming paradigm (Ratcliff & McKoon, 1978), to obtain information about the locus of associative memory difficulties in learning disabled children. Consistent with earlier studies, learning disabled children were found to experience greater difficulty than nondisabled children when tested with a cued recall task. In contrast, the results of the item recognition priming task indicated that recently studied associations produced equal amounts of priming in learning disabled and nondisabled children. On the basis of the results of these two measures of associative memory, it was argued that learning disabled children had formed recently studied associations, despite their inability to consciously bring them back to mind on an episodic memory task. Results were discussed within the explicit and implicit memory framework of Graf and Schacter (1985).