Sign and symbol in children's processing of familiar auditory stimuli

The perceptual-linguistic stimulus distinction for auditory stimuli was examined. In Study 1, stimulus recognition was tested, and serial recall was tested in Study 2. Stimuli were sounds (perceptual condition) and the corresponding words (linguistic condition) for 49 familiar events, in within-subjects designs. Subjects were 3- through 5-year-old nonretarded children and moderately and severely mentally retarded public-school students. Results revealed a strong main effect of developmental age for both stimulus conditions and IQ. Retarded and nonretarded students performed similarly on auditory-perceptual stimuli. Nonretarded students performed significantly better than did retarded students on auditory-linguistic stimuli. The assumption of a developmental relationship in which younger children would perform better on perceptual and older children on linguistic stimuli was not confirmed. Limitations of the recall-test procedure were discussed. A hypothesis for the relationship of auditory-perceptual stimulus recognition to language learning of retarded people was presented. The importance of studying retarded persons' cognitive processes in mediation systems other than the verbal was emphasized.