Developmental progressions and regressions in the selective remembering strategies of EMR individuals

Developmental changes in the use of strategies to eliminate interference from irrelevant information in memory were investigated. The participants in the first experiment were 11-, 15-, and 18-year-old EMR students, and those in the second experiment were 30-year-old retarded and nonretarded adults. In both experiments a directed forgetting paradigm was used in which the person was presented two sets of pictures but only recalled one set on a trial. On some trials there was a cue to forget the first set and to remember only the second set. The cue to forget was not used by the youngest group of students. The 15- and 18-year-olds used the cue, but interference from the to-be-forgotten items remained. The 30-year-old retarded group regressed to the performance pattern of the youngest group, whereas the nonretarded adults used appropriate selective remembering strategies. The implications of developmental changes in the memory performance of retarded persons were discussed.