Department of Psychological Science, Kennesaw State University, 402 Bartow Ave NW, Kennesaw, GA 30144, United States.
Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, 108 E Dean Keeton St, Austin, TX 78712, United States.
Cereb Cortex. 2023 Jun 20;33(13):8546-8556. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhad139.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is associated with episodic memory impairment. However, episodic memories include a variety of contextual details, and it is difficult to solely rely on behavioral data to assess how specifically (i.e. event-specific reinstatement) an event is remembered. We applied encoding-retrieval representational similarity (ERS) analysis to EEG data to assess event-specific ERS for object-context associations in a sample of 34 adults (17 with, 17 without ASD). Participants studied objects presented alongside 2 contextual features: scene/color, and attention was directed toward one object-context relationship. At retrieval, memory was assessed for the object and both contexts. Behavioral results revealed no group differences in item or context memory performance. ERS results revealed group temporal differences in reinstatement. Results may indicate differences in both encoding (i.e. fewer perceptual details) and retrieval (i.e. ineffectively skipping through memory fragments) in ASD and should be further investigated in studies modulating the perceptual detail required for memory decisions. Results highlight the utility of ERS as a methodology used to evaluate episodic reinstatement even in the absence of behavioral differences in memory performance.
自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）与情景记忆障碍有关。然而，情景记忆包括各种情境细节，仅依靠行为数据很难评估事件是如何被具体记住的（即事件特定的恢复）。我们应用编码-检索代表性相似性（ERS）分析对 EEG 数据进行分析，以评估 34 名成年人样本中物体-情境关联的事件特定 ERS（17 名 ASD 患者，17 名非 ASD 患者）。参与者研究了与 2 个情境特征（场景/颜色）一起呈现的物体：注意力被引导到一个物体-情境关系上。在检索时，对物体和两个情境进行记忆评估。行为结果显示，在项目或情境记忆表现方面，两组没有差异。ERS 结果显示，恢复时组间存在时间差异。结果可能表明 ASD 患者在编码（即感知细节较少）和检索（即通过记忆片段无效地跳过）方面存在差异，并且应该在需要调节记忆决策所需感知细节的研究中进一步研究。结果突出了 ERS 作为一种评估情景恢复的方法的效用，即使在记忆表现方面没有行为差异的情况下也是如此。
