Visual recognition in mentally retarded adolescents: cue value and instruction effects.

Recognition scores for positive and negative discriminative stimuli tested after a single trial through a discrimination problem list indicated that the frequency theory shown by Ekstrand, Wallace, and Underwood (1966) to account for the verbal discrimination learning of nonretarded adults may also hold for the visual-discrimination learning of mentally retarded persons (MA 5 to 8 and MA 8 to 11 years). In addition, retarded subjects correctly recognized the stimuli the stimuli more often after a simple inspection trial than after a standard discrimination-learning trial, indicating that they encoded the stimuli differently depending on the instructional set. The encoding difference was mediated by looking patterns. Both MA and serial position of stimuli on presentation and on test affected recognition.