![]() Hence, there seems to be a contradiction between the findings of experimental studies asking mainly for specific memories and free reports of autobiographical memories in autism. The authors propose that a hyperactivation in these brain circuitries could account for hyper-perception, hyper-attention, hyper-emotionality, and even hyper-memory in autism. Concordantly, according to the intense world theory by Markram and Markram ( 21), individuals with autism perceive the world more intensely than non-autistic individuals, due to overactive brain circuitry. Since the probability of encoding increases with a stronger involvement in a particular situation ( 20), one could assume that individuals with autism are better in memorizing sensory details than non-autistic individuals. Not only are sensory features included in the new diagnostic criteria of the autism spectrum disorder but also has sensory perception been reported to be atypical in 69–100% of individuals with autism. Interestingly and contrariwise to the mentioned experimental studies, some individuals with high-functioning autism seem to be able to recall personal events from a very young age and moreover, these memories are rich in sensory detail. Also, memories of people with autism were shown to include fewer social and emotional details ( 10). Other authors attributed deficits in autobiographical memory in autism to a failure in the development of self-identity ( 4) or to impairments in Theory of Mind and working memory ( 5). The authors concluded that a deficit in autonoetic awareness, as well as a broad lack of specificity (which is a lack of specific information on time and place), causes autobiographical deficits in autism. For example, Tanweer and colleagues reported that not the entire autobiographical memory is affected in autism ( know events are preserved), but only those aspects that can be related to the ability to relive one’s past, known as autonoetic awareness ( remember) ( 9). Interestingly, studies differentiating between semantic know and episodic remember events have shown that only the episodic but not the semantic autobiographical memory is impaired in autism ( 4, 9). Mostly, these studies included direct social interaction, referred to predefined events or contexts, or asked for autobiographical memories formed later in life than in early childhood. Specifically, memory formation is influenced by difficulties in social interaction and communication, problems in the formation of new scripts, a tendency to display repetitive behaviors, and often narrow interests, which are typical characteristics in autism.Ī number of studies on episodic memory report deficits in people with autism, which seem to be augmented in males in comparison to females, possibly due to differences in verbal fluency ( 8). Furthermore, our results emphasize the supporting influence of language for memory formation and give evidence for an important role of sensory features in memories of people on the AS.Īutism is a pervasive developmental disorder in which some of the important core processes required for memory formation are impaired. Results indicate that people on the AS do not differ from non-autistic people in the age of their earliest know events but remember events from an earlier age in childhood and with more sensory details, contradicting the assumption of an overall deficit in personal episodic memory in autism. To assess this contradiction empirically, we implemented an online questionnaire on early childhood events to compare people on the autism spectrum (AS) and non-autistic people with respect to their earliest autobiographical episodic memories and the earliest semantic know event as told by another person. “When I was one and a half years old, I was on a ferry lying on red seats” – while several autobiographical accounts by people with autism reveal vivid memories of early childhood, the vast amount of experimental investigations found deficits in personal autobiographic memory in autism.
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