McCrory Eamon, Henry Lucy A, Happé Francesca
The Anna Freud Centre, UCL, London, UK.
J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2007 May;48(5):482-9. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2006.01715.x.
Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) present with a particular profile of memory deficits, executive dysfunction and impaired social interaction that may raise concerns about their recall and reliability in forensic and legal contexts. Extant studies of memory shed limited light on this issue as they involved either laboratory-based tasks or protocols that varied between participants.
The current study used a live classroom event to investigate eye-witness recall and suggestibility in children with Asperger syndrome (AS group; N = 24) and typically developing children (TD group; N = 27). All participants were aged between 11 and 14 years and were interviewed using a structured protocol. Two measures of executive functioning were also administered.
The AS group were found to be no more suggestible and no less accurate than their peers. However, free recall elicited less information, including gist, in the AS group. TD, but not AS, participants tended to focus on the socially salient aspects of the scene in their free recall. Both general and specific questioning elicited similar numbers of new details in both groups. Significant correlations were found between memory recall and executive functioning performance in the AS group only.
The present study indicates that children with AS can act as reliable witnesses but they may be more reliant on questioning to facilitate recall. Our findings also provide evidence for poor gist memory. It is speculated that such differences stem from weak central coherence and lead to a reliance on generic cognitive processes, such as executive functions, during recall. Future studies are required to investigate possible differences in compliance, rates of forgetting and false memory.
自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者存在特定的记忆缺陷、执行功能障碍和社交互动受损情况，这可能引发人们对他们在法医和法律背景下的回忆能力及可靠性的担忧。现有的记忆研究对此问题的阐释有限，因为这些研究要么基于实验室任务，要么参与者之间的实验方案各不相同。
本研究利用一次真实的课堂活动，调查阿斯伯格综合征儿童（AS组；N = 24）和发育正常儿童（TD组；N = 27）的目击证人回忆能力和受暗示性。所有参与者年龄在11至14岁之间，并采用结构化方案进行访谈。还实施了两项执行功能测量。
发现AS组并不比同龄人更易受暗示，准确性也不更低。然而，AS组的自由回忆引出的信息更少，包括要点。TD组参与者（而非AS组）在自由回忆中倾向于关注场景中具有社会显著性的方面。一般提问和具体提问在两组中引出的新细节数量相似。仅在AS组中发现记忆回忆与执行功能表现之间存在显著相关性。
本研究表明，患有AS的儿童可以作为可靠的证人，但他们可能更依赖提问来促进回忆。我们的研究结果也为要点记忆不佳提供了证据。据推测，这种差异源于弱中央连贯性，导致在回忆过程中依赖一般认知过程，如执行功能。未来的研究需要调查在依从性、遗忘率和错误记忆方面可能存在的差异。
