Use of categorical knowledge to aid recall

Recall performance of 84 mildly retarded adolescents and 84 non-retarded fourth graders was compared under various encoding conditions. The seven encoding conditions consisted of the following format-cueing combinations: simultaneous-subject cues, simultaneous-experimenter cues, sort-subjects cues, sort-experimenter cues, sequential-subject cues, sequential-experimenter cues, and sequential-no cues. Stimuli were 24 colour pictures from six categories. Results indicated generally comparable levels of performance for retarded and non-retarded subjects. However, retarded subjects were less responsive to sort and experimenter cue conditions, which led to increased recall in the non-retarded subjects. It was suggested that retrieval difficulties may be interfering with the ability of retarded individuals to utilize categorical knowledge to facilitate recall.