Abstract
Retarded and normal children were given a task that consisted of acquisition of a favorable impression to a fictitious person and an unfavorable impression to another fictitious person, the reversal of these impressions, and, finally, rating the two persons on a 5-point scale indicating how much S liked or disliked the two persons. Retardates were as good as MA-matched normals in trials to learn and reverse and as fast in their verbal response latencies. In their ratings, retardates did not show a preference for either the acquisition or the reversal experience, whereas the normals were influenced by the reversal experience. Persistence of meaning was hypothesized to follow an ontogenetic pattern of no differentiation through a preference for recency in preadolescents to a primacy preference in young adults.
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An extended report may be obtained from J. P. Das. Centre for the Study of Mental Retardation, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
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Das, J.P., Bower, A.C. Development and persistence of acquired meaning in retarded and normal children. Psychon Sci 18, 241–242 (1970). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03335758
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03335758