Visual and kinesthetic memory and integration of mentally retarded and nonretarded adults.

The verbal short-term memory finding (Brown, 1974) that retarded individuals often fail to adopt rehearsal strategies spontaneously was extended to situations involving visual and kinesthetic short-term memory. Subjects were presented with a distance either visually or kinesthetically and after either a filled or unfilled retention interval were asked to reproduce the distance either visually or kinesthetically. Both retarded and nonretarded subjects seemed to benefit from the opportunity to rehearse information over the unfilled retention interval. The performance of cultural-familial retarded subjects mirrored that of nonretarded subjects, but brain-damaged subjects did particularly poorly in crossmodal situations. In conditions involving kinesthetic reproduction, brain-damaged subjects systematically overestimated distances.