IMAGERY AND THE PROSE RECALL OF MILDLY RETARDED-CHILDREN

The oral prose learning of mildly retarded children was compared to th at of two groups of intellectually ''normal'' children. One group of n ormal children was younger than the retarded children, but equivalent to them in mental age. The other group was the same chronological age as the retarded children, but higher in mental age. All children liste ned to three stories and answered questions about story events. The or al prose recall of the retarded children was found to be less than tha t of the normal children of equivalent mental age, providing no suppor t for the mental age model that holds that the oral prose learning abi lity of a mildly retarded child is as good as that of a normal child o f equivalent mental age. Recall was highest among the normal children of the same chronological age. The provision of pictures with the stor ies improved the oral prose recall of both the mildly retarded childre n and the normal children of equivalent mental age, suggesting that st rategic support of the imagery process benefits both retarded children as well as normal children. (C) 1995 Academic Press, Inc.