AUTOMATICITY OF INFORMATION-PROCESSING AND EVALUATION OF MENTAL-RETARDATION

The goal of this study is to show the usefulness of data concerning re action time and its variability on simple psychometric items in the co ntext of intellectual assessment of mentally retarded individuals. Two experiments compared the response time data for two groups of normal seven and nine year old children with data for two groups of mentally retarded persons whose mental ages compared to that of the children. T he joint analysis of response time and variability resulted in indicat ions regarding not only the effectiveness of information processing bu t the development of skills as reflected in degree of automaticity. In fact, analysis of response time variability enables the distinction o f cases in which a specific skill leads to the restructuring of inform ation processing, i.e. automation, from those which do not have such r estructuring.