Department of Clinical Medicine, Center for Music in the Brain, Aarhus University, The Royal Academy of Music Aarhus/Aalborg, Aarhus, Denmark.
Cognitive Science, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
Autism Res. 2020 Nov;13(11):1959-1969. doi: 10.1002/aur.2379. Epub 2020 Sep 1.
Our memories are made of detailed sensory information representing the puzzle pieces of our personal past. The type of memory integrating sensory features is referred to as relational memory. The main objective of this study was to investigate whether relational memory is affected in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) since altered relational memory may contribute to atypical episodic memory observed in ASD. We also examined the association between perceptual style and relational memory abilities. Children with ASD (n = 14) and typically developed (TD) children (n = 16, 9-15 years old) completed a memory task with three conditions: two single-feature conditions measuring memory for objects and locations, and one relational memory condition measuring memory for objects and their locations combined. The Children's embedded figures test was administered to measure perceptual style. The ASD group selected more incorrect stimuli (false alarms) than the TD group, resulting in a lower proportion of correctly recognized targets across all memory conditions. The ASD group did not display a more local perceptual style than the TD group. However, perceptual style was associated with improved memory abilities across conditions. Our findings indicate that the overall memory performance of children with ASD is less stable, leading them to more incorrect responses than TD children. This may be due to the executive demands of the memory tasks, rather than specific impairments in memory binding. Autism Res 2020, 13: 1959-1969. © 2020 International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals LLC LAY SUMMARY: The present study shows that children with autism have a less stable memory than typically developed children, which is reflected in a higher amount of incorrect memory responses. Overall, our results indicate that children with autism display difficulties in differentiating previously studied from novel information when solving both single-feature memory tasks and a relational memory task (requiring memory of combination of features). These difficulties may have implications for how children with autism remember episodes from their personal past.
我们的记忆是由代表个人过去的详细感官信息组成的。整合感官特征的记忆类型被称为关系记忆。本研究的主要目的是调查自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）儿童的关系记忆是否受到影响，因为改变的关系记忆可能导致 ASD 中观察到的非典型情景记忆。我们还研究了知觉风格与关系记忆能力之间的关联。ASD 儿童（n=14）和典型发育（TD）儿童（n=16，9-15 岁）完成了一项记忆任务，包括三种条件：两种用于测量物体和位置记忆的单一特征条件，以及一种用于测量物体及其位置组合记忆的关系记忆条件。儿童镶嵌图形测验用于测量知觉风格。ASD 组选择的错误刺激（虚报）多于 TD 组，导致所有记忆条件下正确识别目标的比例降低。ASD 组的局部知觉风格并不比 TD 组明显。然而，知觉风格与所有条件下的记忆能力提高有关。我们的发现表明，ASD 儿童的整体记忆表现不太稳定，导致他们比 TD 儿童做出更多的错误反应。这可能是由于记忆任务的执行需求，而不是记忆结合的特定损伤。自闭症研究 2020，13：1959-1969。©2020 自闭症研究国际协会和威利在线图书馆。摘要：本研究表明，自闭症儿童的记忆稳定性不如典型发育儿童，这反映在错误记忆反应的数量增加上。总的来说，我们的研究结果表明，自闭症儿童在解决单一特征记忆任务和关系记忆任务（需要记忆特征的组合）时，在区分先前学习过的信息和新信息方面存在困难。这些困难可能对自闭症儿童如何记住个人过去的事件产生影响。
