Detection of changes in naturalistic scenes: comparisons of individuals with and without mental retardation.

Abilities of individuals with and without mental retardation to search for and detect salient changes to naturalistic scenes were investigated using the flicker paradigm. Located in areas of central or marginal interest, changes involved an object's color, shape, or presence. Individuals with mental retardation required more time to detect changes of all types, and the magnitude of the group difference was more pronounced for marginal-interest changes.

Guided visual search in individuals with mental retardation.

The ability of individuals with mental retardation to focus on task-relevant elements of complex visual arrays and increase visual-search efficiency was investigated. Initial assessments of visual-search efficiency were conducted to identify pairs of features for the form and size dimensions for which each participant demonstrated serial search. Subsequently, color was added as a defining feature that could guide search to a subset of the elements in the array.