Output organization in the free recall of mildly retarded children

Abstract

Output organization in multitrial free recall of ‘unrelated’ lists can be quantified using measures of intertrial consistency or subjective clustering, the latter being based on subjective ‘categories’ revealed in a post-recall sort task. It has previously been shown with picture stimuli (Todman 1982) that recall and subjective clustering, but not intertrial consistency, increase with age for nonretarded children. In the present study, mildly mentally retarded children at three age levels were given the same task. Although recall increased with age, there was no age effect on subjective clustering or intertrial consistency. Output organization of the retarded groups was compared with that of nonretarded groups at three age levels. The nonretarded groups comprised previously tested children selected to equate each group with one of the three retarded groups on mean recall. Across all age levels, intertrial consistency was significantly ( p < 0.02) higher for retarded groups.