Autism Research Group, City University London, Northampton Square, London, UK.
Emotion. 2012 Oct;12(5):1118-28. doi: 10.1037/a0026679. Epub 2012 Feb 6.
Emotionally arousing events are typically better remembered and more resistant to forgetting than neutral events. Findings from word list paradigms suggest that this may not hold for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), who also tend to be less accurate as eyewitnesses under some circumstances. To test whether attenuated effects of arousal on memory may be responsible for poorer eyewitness testimonies in ASD, we asked adults with and without the disorder to view either arousing or neutral versions of a narrated slide sequence (Experiment 1) or video clip (Experiment 2) before assessing their memory for the material. Both groups exhibited increases in psychophysiological arousal during the arousing compared with the neutral version of the narratives, and both groups also demonstrated a memory advantage for the arousing events. Contrary to predictions, these observations indicate that stimulus induced arousal modulates memory for naturalistic events relatively typically in ASD.
情绪激发事件通常比中性事件更容易被记住，也更不容易被遗忘。词汇表范式的研究结果表明，这对于自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者来说可能并不成立，因为他们在某些情况下也往往作为目击者准确性较低。为了测试情绪唤起对记忆的影响是否会导致 ASD 患者较差的目击证词，我们要求患有和不患有这种疾病的成年人观看叙述幻灯片序列（实验 1）或视频剪辑（实验 2）的激发或中性版本，然后评估他们对材料的记忆。与中性叙述相比，两组在观看激发叙述时的生理唤醒都有所增加，两组对激发事件的记忆也都有优势。与预测相反，这些观察结果表明，刺激引起的唤醒在 ASD 中相对正常地调节对自然事件的记忆。
