The role of declarative memory in the acquisition of conceptual semantic knowledge in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Based on Ullman’s (2004) hypothesis that declarative memory impairment will contribute to language impairment, this thesis presents two experiments that test familiarity and recollection in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Intellectual Disability (ID). Four experimental groups comprised children and adolescents with ASD with language impairment (ALI); ASD without language impairment (ALN), intellectually disabled children without ASD (ID) and typically developing children (TD). Children were tested on two forced choice recognition tests of familiarity and recollection and a shape recognition and cued action-recall test. The relation between familiarity and conceptual semantic knowledge was investigated whilst controlling for visuo-perceptual abilities and fluid intelligence. Findings confirmed an association between familiarity and conceptual semantic knowledge in the ASD population as well as the use of visuo-perceptual skills to enhance familiarity. The broader role of declarative memory in language is addressed in ASD. Implications for future methods of testing in ASD populations are considered, as are implications of declarative memory anomalies in both ASD and ID populations in educational settings

The Witness-Aimed First Account (WAFA): a new technique for interviewing autistic witnesses and victims

Autistic people experience social communication difficulties alongside specific memory difficulties that can impact their ability to recall episodic events. Police interviewing techniques do not take account of these differences, and so are often ineffective. Here we introduce a novel Witness-Aimed First Account (WAFA) interview technique, designed to better support autistic witnesses by diminishing socio-cognitive and executive demands through encouraging participants to generate and direct their own discrete, parameter-bound event topics, before freely recalling information within each parameter-bound topic. Since witnessed events are rarely cohesive stories with a logical chain of events, we also explored witnesses’ recall when the narrative structure of the to-be-remembered event was lost. Thirty-three autistic and 30 typically developing (TD) participants were interviewed about their memory for two videos depicting criminal events. Clip segments of one video were ‘scrambled’, disrupting the event’s narrative structure; the other video was watched intact. Although both autistic and TD witnesses recalled fewer details with less accuracy from the scrambled video, WAFA interviews resulted in more detailed and accurate recall from autistic and TD witnesses, for both scrambled and unscrambled videos. The WAFA technique may be a useful tool to improve autistic and TD witnesses’ accounts within a legally appropriate, non-leading framework

Reward devaluation in autistic and adolescents with complex needs: a feasibility study

Rewards act as a motivator for positive behaviour and learning. Although compounding evidence indicates that reward processing operates differently in autistic individuals who do not have co-occurring learning disabilities, little is known about individuals who have such difficulties or other complex needs. This study aimed first to assess the feasibility of using an adapted reward devaluation paradigm to examine basic reward processes in this underrepresented population, and second to investigate whether autistic children and adolescents with complex needs would show dynamic behavioural changes in response to changes in the motivational value of a reward. 27 autistic children and adolescents with complex needs and 20 typically-developing 5-year-old children took part in the study. Participants were presented with two visual cues on a touchscreen laptop which triggered the delivery of a video, music or physical reward. One of the rewards was then presented in abundance to decrease its motivational value. Participants showed decreased interest in the video and music rewards after devaluation. The experimental setup was found to be suitable to test individuals with complex needs, although recommendations are made for the use of physical rewards. The results suggest that autistic participants with complex needs demonstrate goal-directed behaviour and that it is feasible to develop experimental paradigms that can shed important light on learning processes that are fundamental to many education and intervention strategies for this population

Risk of criminal justice system interactions in young adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: findings from a national birth cohort

Objective: To examine criminal justice system (CJS) interactions and pathways through the justice system for young adults with ADHD compared to young adults without ADHD. Method: Nationwide 3-year birth cohort study using linked health and CJS data. Cox proportional hazards models were employed to examine associations between ADHD and police proceedings, court charges, court convictions, and incarcerations. Results: Young adults with ADHD were significantly more likely to interact with the CJS including police proceedings (hazard ratio [HR], 2.1 95% CI [2.0, 2.2]) court charges (HR, 2.2 95% CI [2.1, 2.3]), court convictions (HR, 2.3 95% CI [2.2, 2.4]), and incarceration (HR, 4.8 95% CI [4.3, 5.4]). Conclusions: Young adults with ADHD are overrepresented at all stages of the CJS. Results highlight the importance of early identification and responsivity to ADHD within the CJS and suggest that the NZ justice system may require changes to both areas to ensure that young individuals with ADHD receive equitable access to, and treatment within, the CJS

Eye-tracking reveals absent repetition learning across the autism spectrum: Evidence from a passive viewing task

In the domain of memory, autism is characterised by difficulties in explicitly remembering the specific order of stimuli (e.g., Bowler et al., 2016; Poirier, et al., 2011), whereas implicit serial order memory appears to be preserved (Foti et al., 2015). This pattern is of considerable interest because serial order memory is known to play a critical role in children’s language development (Ullman, 2004). Currently, however, few paradigms exist that can effectively probe serial order memory across heterogeneous groups of children, including those who are minimally verbal. We present two experiments, involving 39 adults (20 ASD; 19 TD) and 130 children (86 ASD; 44TD), that address this issue using an eye-tracking paradigm, which simply required participants to ‘watch out for a bunny’ that appeared in repeating sequences of screen locations. The adults in experiment 1 all had normative IQs, whereas experiment 2 included children with and without substantial language and intellectual difficulties. In both experiments gaze latencies and anticipatory fixations to the bunny indicated reliable repetition learning effects in the TD but not the ASD groups. Importantly, we were able to acquire reliable data from around half of the children with significant language impairments in experiment 2, indicating that the paradigm can shed light on important learning processes in this underrepresented group. We discuss the implications of these findings for theories of memory in ASD as well as for the utility of eye-tracking technology to probe repetition learning effects in autism

Declarative memory and structural language impairment in autistic children and adolescents

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that a plausible contributory factor of structural language impairment in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is impaired declarative memory. We hypothesised that familiarity and recollection (subserving semantic and episodic memory, respectively) are both impaired in autistic individuals with clinically significant language impairment and learning disability (ASDLI/LD); whereas recollection is selectively impaired in autistic individuals with typical language (ASDTL). Teenagers with ASDLI/LD (n = 19) and primary school age children with ASDTL (n = 26) were compared with teenagers with learning disability (LD) (n = 26) without autism, and primary school aged typically developing (TD) children (n = 32). Both experiments provided strong support for the hypothesised links between declarative memory processes and lexical-semantic facets of language in the two autistic groups, but not in the TD group. Additional findings of interest were that declarative memory processes and lexical-semantic knowledge were also linked in the LD group and that the ASD groups –and to a lesser extent the LD group – may have compensated for declarative memory impairments using spared visual-perceptual abilities, a finding with potential educational implications. Relative difficulties with familiarity and recollection in ASDLI/LD and LD may help explain structural language impairment, as investigated here, but also the broader learning disabilities found in these populations