Knowledge and behavior relationships in the memory ability of retarded and nonretarded students

Twenty mildly mentally retarded adolescents were matched with two groups of nonretarded students, one of the same chronological age (CA 16) and the other of the same mental age (MA 9), to examine the influence of age and metamemory on recall. This was achieved using an adapted metamemory instrument which included relevant recall tasks. Recall scores showed that when tasks exhibited some organizational features, the retarded group was as accurate as their CA counterparts; when tasks were less organized, they responded much like their MA counterparts. Regression analyses indicated that, depending on task characteristics, chronological age emerged as a significant predictor of recall in certain situations, and in others, mental age accounted for more variance. Metamemory responses in one task accounted for more variance than either CA or MA.