Factors influencing the interrogative strategies of mentally retarded and nonretarded students.

The interrogative strategies of institutionalized mentally retarded young adults and nonretarded first and fourth graders were investigated using a 20-questions type task. Subjects were presented with 8- and 16-cell matrices consisting of geometric forms, and the items that were eliminated by their questions were either covered or left uncovered or left uncovered. A variety of dependent measures was obtained, including information efficiency and proportion of redundant and constraint-seeking questions. In contrast to findings in previous research, results showed that reducing array size and covering eliminated items significantly improved various aspects of children's interrogative strategies, lending support to the idea that reducing cognitive strain can enhance information-processing ability. Despite task simplification, the performance of the fourth graders exceeded that of the first graders on most measures, and the performance of the retarded young adults was comparable to, or poorer than, that of the first graders, who were of appreciably lower MA.