Auditory-visual integration by mentally retarded adolescents.

The ability of mildly mentally retarded adolescents to identify the equivalence of auditory and visual stimuli under conditions that did and did not involve transposition from spatial to temporal and vice versa was examined. Subjects' abilities to judge equivalence of stimuli within a modality under conditions that required transposition from spatial patterns to temporal patterns was also examined. They scored significantly better on intra- than on intersensory tasks and had no more difficulty with intrasensory tasks requiring transposition than with tasks requiring no transposition. On intersensory tasks, however, the subjects' performance was significantly worse on tasks requiring transposition.