MOTIVATIONAL ORIENTATION AND SPAN OF APPREHENSION IN CHILDREN WITH MENTAL-RETARDATION

Children diagnosed as mildly mentally retarded were examined with resp ect to performance on Estes's (1965) span-of-apprehension task. Based on their scores on the Simplified Version of the Intellectual Achievem ent Responsibility scale, we divided subjects into a ''learned-helples s'' group and a ''mastery-oriented'' group. Motivational orientation h ad a significant effect on performance, with the mastery-oriented subj ects demonstrating higher detection accuracies than the learned-helple ss subjects. These results have implications regarding not only centra lly mediated attentional functioning in children with mental retardati on, but also interpretation of certain previous findings with the span -of-apprehension task.