Form Discrimination Performance of Linguistically Retarded Children

Abstract

Intra- and intermodal form-discrimination performance was studied in 9 linguistically retarded children. Stimuli were the blocks which comprise the Seguin Form Board. The main findings were that haptic intramodal discriminations were the most difficult of the various conditions and that visual-haptic intermodal discriminations were not significantly more difficult than visual intramodal ones. The first finding may be in part an artifact of simultaneous versus successive stimulation. The second finding was discussed in relation to dissimilar findings from previous studies of various other retarded groups. Methodological problems inherent in previous designs were described, and reasons for the disparity in experimental results were suggested.