Inhibition of return and negative priming by persons with and without mental retardation

Persons with and without mental retardation who were matched on CA took part in three tasks: an inhibition of return task, a location negative-priming task, and an identity negative-priming task. Having participants perform all three tasks allowed us to correlate performance among the tasks and assess the various relationships among performance measures on negative priming and inhibition of return. The participants with mental retardation did not exhibit negative priming of identity. However, they did exhibit negative priming of location and inhibition of return. The participants without mental retardation exhibited all three effects. A different pattern of correlations was observed for the participants with and those without mental retardation. Possible reasons for this difference are discussed.