This proposal is seeking continued support for a program of research involving relational learning in mentally retarded and nonretarded individuals, which has been funded by NICHD for 3 years.
The specific aim of the present investigators is to analyze and enhance the relational characteristics of stimulus arrays in order to facilitate performance on tasks such as oddity and match-to-sample. Both mentally retarded and young nonretarded children are particularly prone to failure on these relational tasks (Green et al., 1990; Soraci, Deckner, Baumeister, & Carlin, 1990). Converging evidence from various studies suggests that a critical factor in the performance discrepancies between retarded and nonretarded children is a differential sensitivity to relational information. We are in the formative stages in the development of a general theory of relational learning that would have implications for an understanding of the locus of performance differences across varying levels of intellectual functioning (e.g., Soraci, Baumeister, & Carlin, in press). In the proposed studies, emphasis will be placed on the role of the structures of visual arrays in facilitating detection of relevant stimulus relations as a """"""""front-end"""""""" (Brown, Collins, & Deguid, 1989) intervention strategy. The proposed studies are divided into two sections: (a) Global Stimulus Array Organization: The Oddity Paradigm, and (b) Stimulus-Specific Organization: The Detection Paradigm.
| Carlin, Michael T; Soraci, Sal A; Dennis, Nancy A et al. (2002) Guided visual search in individuals with mental retardation. Am J Ment Retard 107:237-51 |
| Mackay, Harry A; Soraci, Sal A; Carlin, Michael T et al. (2002) Guiding visual attention during acquisition of matching-to-sample. Am J Ment Retard 107:445-54 |
| Carlin, M T; Soraci, S A; Dennis, N A et al. (2001) Enhancing free-recall rates of individuals with mental retardation. Am J Ment Retard 106:314-26 |
| Wills, T W; Soraci, S A; Chechile, R A et al. (2000) ""Aha"" effects in the generation of pictures. Mem Cognit 28:939-48 |
| Soraci Jr, S A; Franks, J J; Bransford, J D et al. (1994) Incongruous item generation effects: a multiple-cue perspective. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 20:67-78 |
