Effects of structural importance and idea saliency on discourse recall of mentally retarded and nonretarded pupils.

The ability of EMR individuals and two groups of nonretarded students to rate and recall story ideas as a function of textual structural importance and idea saliency was investigated. Students rated idea units of a story on one variable either before or after attempting story recall. Results indicated that the groups were more accurate in identifying low-importance units than high-importance units and that although the nonretarded pupils were more accurate in identifying units of low and medium saliency than high saliency, the retarded pupils did not differ in rating accuracy at the three saliency levels. Making ratings of structural importance was found to enhance recall. Retarded students recalled less salient and nonsalient material than did the 11- to 13-year-old nonretarded group and recalled more nonsalient and medium-level salient units than did the 7- to 9-year-old nonretarded group.