Effects of auditory and pictorial-auditory stimulus enrichment on the verbal abstracting abilities of low-SES children.

Sixty-four low-SES Caucasian children, mean age 8.3 years, with high- and lowintellectual ability, were given a verbal similarities task. One-half of the subjects (the control group) received nonenriched items (2 exemplars of each concept on Presentation 1, which were repeated on Presentation 2), and half (the experimental group) received enriched items (2 exemplars of each concept on Presentation 1 and 4 exemplars on Presentation 2). Stimuli were presented in either the auditory or pictorial-auditory mode. The low-ability experimental group achieved abstracting gain scores greater than those of the lol-ability control group and greater than those of the high-ability experimental group. The low-ability experimental group achieved scores equivalent to those of the high-ability group under the pictorial-auditory enriched condition. Implications of these findings were discussed relative to academic performance of EMR children.