Influence of visual cueing on conditioned response inhibition in retarded individuals.

A consistent finding with respect to retarded individuals is that they exhibit prolonged responding during the extinction phase of a classical eyelid-conditioning procedure relative to nonretarded individuals. The present investigation was carried out to determine whether the failure of retarded individuals to cease conditioned responding is due to a motor inhibitory deficit or to the inability to form a cognitive inhibitory set. The results indicated that, with prompting, the retarded subjects were able to inhibit the conditioned response, thereby eliminating the motor inhibitory deficit explanation for the continued conditioned responding. The data further suggested that the failure to form a cognitive inhibitory set may be related to the inability of retarded individuals to produce effective mediators.