Imitation by institutionalized and noninstitutionalized mentally retarded and nonretarded children.

Institutionalized and noninstitutionalized mentally retarded children and noninstitutionalized nonretarded children matched for MA performed on two imitation tasks. The institutionalized retarded group was found to be more imitative on the first task. For all groups, peers as opposed to adults were found to be the more salient model on the second task. Performance across the two imitation tasks was not correlated; however, within each of the tasks, amount of imitation of peers was related to amount of imitation of adults. These findings were interpreted within the framework of Zigler's outerdirectedness formulation.