Differences between EMR and nonretarded children in fluency and quality of verbal associations.

An association task, in which a subject was asked to give up to 25 associations to each of 10 verbal stimuli, was administered to 32 EMR and 32 nonretarded subjects, along with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. The associations were scored for quantity and speed of response; they were also categorized by a modification of Flavell's system for response quality. As expected, the two groups differed in vocabularly size. When vocabularly size was controlled, relatively few differences between EMR and nonretarded subjects remained: EMR subjects were slower than nonretarded subjects in their first and continuing responses to the association stimuli, used fewer logical associations, and used fewer responses with vocational connotations. In light of the fact that after adjustment for vocabulary differences, the two groups differed on only 6 of the 24 measures examined, the associative networks of the two groups were surprisingly comparable. The remaining differences demonstrated a specific deficit in logical connections and in speed of access to the associative net.