The psychophysiological mechanisms of alexithymia in autism spectrum disorder

Accumulating evidence indicates that co-occurring alexithymia underlies several facets of the social-emotional difficulties common in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The mechanisms involved, however, remain poorly understood because measuring alexithymia relies heavily on self-report. To address this issue, carefully matched groups of individuals with ASD and comparison participants rated 70 emotion-inducing pictures on subjectively experienced arousal while skin conductance responses were monitored objectively. The results demonstrated reliable correlations between these subjective and objective measures, and in both groups around 25% of individual differences in this correlation (i.e. in emotion-relevant interoception) were accounted for by self-reported alexithymia. In the context of the wider literature, this suggests that alexithymia involves a disruption in how physiological arousal modulates the subjective experience of feelings in those with and without a diagnosis of ASD. Since mindfulness based therapies foster greater awareness of thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations, the findings also have implications for how the symptoms and consequences of alexithymia (e.g., anxiety) might be ameliorated

Episodic but not semantic order memory difficulties in autism spectrum disorder: Evidence from the Historical Figures Task

Considerable evidence suggests that the episodic memory system operates abnormally in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) whereas the functions of the semantic memory system are relatively preserved. Here we show that the same dissociation also applies to the domain of order memory. We asked adult participants to order the names of famous historical figures either according to their chronological order in history (probing semantic memory) or according to a random sequence shown once on a screen (probing episodic memory). As predicted, adults with ASD performed less well than age- and IQ-matched comparison individuals only on the episodic task. This observation is of considerable importance in the context of developmental theory because semantic and episodic order memory abilities can be dissociated in typically developing infants before they reach the age at which the behavioural markers associated with ASD are first apparent. This raises the possibility that early emerging memory abnormalities play a role in shaping the developmental trajectory of the disorder. We discuss the broader implications of this possibility and highlight the urgent need for greater scrutiny of memory competences in ASD early in development

Relational Memory Processes in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Research into memory in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) suggests intact item memory but difficulties in forming relations between items (Bowler, Gaigg, & Lind, 2011). In this study, we tested memory for items as well as for sequential, spatial, and associative relations between items with the same paradigm using abstract shapes in ASD and typically developing (TD) individuals. Participants studied shape triplets on a computer screen and memory was subsequently tested either for the individual items making up the triplets, the screen-locations, the order or the combinations of items presented at study. Contrary to our predictions, performance was significantly lower in the ASD group on all four tasks. The result raises questions about how intact item memory is in ASD, which role task complexity plays, and how item-specific versus relational processing affect task performance. One possibility is that TD individuals relied more on relational processing in the current study and might have therefore had an advantage over ASD individuals. This idea is supported by the result of a preliminary analysis of age-related differences in memory across the midadult lifespan in both groups. Age seems to affect order memory less in ASD compared with TD individuals where it leads to a significant decrease in performance. This might indicate a decrease in relational processing in TD but not ASD individuals with increasing age. More research is needed to answer questions about the change in cognition in ASD individuals across the lifespan

Object-location memory in adults with autism spectrum disorder

This study tested implicit and explicit spatial relational memory in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Participants were asked to study pictures of rooms and pictures of daily objects for which locations were highlighted in the rooms. Participants were later tested for their memory of the object locations either by being asked to place objects back into their original locations or into new locations. Proportions of times when participants choose the previously studied locations for the objects irrespective of the instruction were used to derive indices of explicit and implicit memory [process-dissociation procedure, Jacoby, 1991, 1998]. In addition, participants performed object and location recognition and source memory tasks where they were asked about which locations belonged to the objects and which objects to the locations. The data revealed difficulty for ASD individuals in actively retrieving object locations (explicit memory) but not in subconsciously remembering them (implicit memory). These difficulties cannot be explained by difficulties in memory for objects or locations per se (i.e., the difficulty pertains to object-location relations). Together these observations lend further support to the idea that ASD is characterised by relatively circumscribed difficulties in relational rather than item-specific memory processes and show that these difficulties extend to the domain of spatial information. They also lend further support to the idea that memory difficulties in ASD can be reduced when support is provided at test

Validation of the Cognitive Assessment of Later Life Status (CALLS) instrument: a computerized telephonic measure

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Brief screening tests have been developed to measure cognitive performance and dementia, yet they measure limited cognitive domains and often lack construct validity. Neuropsychological assessments, while comprehensive, are too costly and time-consuming for epidemiological studies. This study's aim was to develop a psychometrically valid telephone administered test of cognitive function in aging.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Using a sequential hierarchical strategy, each stage of test development did not proceed until specified criteria were met. The 30 minute Cognitive Assessment of Later Life Status (CALLS) measure and a 2.5 hour in-person neuropsychological assessment were conducted with a randomly selected sample of 211 participants 65 years and older that included equivalent distributions of men and women from ethnically diverse populations.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Overall Cronbach's coefficient alpha for the CALLS test was 0.81. A principal component analysis of the CALLS tests yielded five components. The CALLS total score was significantly correlated with four neuropsychological assessment components. Older age and having a high school education or less was significantly correlated with lower CALLS total scores. Females scored better overall than males. There were no score differences based on race.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The CALLS test is a valid measure that provides a unique opportunity to reliably and efficiently study cognitive function in large populations.</p

Cognitive perspective-taking during scene perception in autism spectrum disorder: evidence from eye movements.

The present study examined how eye movements during scene viewing are modulated by adopting psychological perspectives in both adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and typically developing adults. In the current study, participants viewed house scenes with either non‐perspective‐taking (look for valuable items/features of the house that need fixing) or perspective‐taking instructions (imagine that you are a burglar/repairman) while their eye movements were recorded. The eye movement measures revealed that for the “look for the valuable items” and burglar perspective task, the ASD group showed typical relevance effects (the preference to look at schema‐relevant compared with schema‐irrelevant targets) in their eye movements. However, we found subtle processing differences between the groups that were related to initial orienting to and processing of schema‐relevant items for the “look for the features that need fixing” and the repairman perspective‐taking task. There was an absence of a relevance effect for the ASD group for the repairman perspective and its non‐perspective‐taking equivalent instruction showing that the identification of items relevant to those schemas was more difficult for the ASD group. The present findings suggest that resolving ambiguity may be a defining feature of complex information processing deficits in ASD. Autism Res 2014, 7: 84–93. © 2013 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc

The McGurk Effect in Children with Autism and Asperger Syndrome

DOI: 10.1002/aur.1343Children with autism may have difficulties putting together what they see and hear during speech, which has been linked to understanding of speech and language development. However, little has been done to examine children with Asperger Syndrome as a group on tasks assessing integration of what is seen and heard during speech, despite this group’s often greater language skills. Samples of children with Autism, Asperger Syndrome, and Down Syndrome, as well as a typically developing sample, were presented with an auditory-only condition, a speech-reading condition, and an audiovisual condition that involved mismatching auditory and visual signals. Children with Autism demonstrated auditory-only and speech-reading performance at the same level as the other groups, yet showed a lower performance on the audiovisual condition compared to the Asperger, Down and typical samples. These results suggest that children with Autism may have unique difficulties integrating what is seen and heard during speech perception that may be linked to how they mentally representation speech sounds.Canadian Instititues of Health Research, Ontario Mental Health Foundation, Autism Ontari

Brief Report: Attenuated Emotional Suppression of the Attentional Blink in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Another Non-Social Abnormality?

Twenty-five individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder and 25 typically developed individuals participated in an Attentional Blink paradigm to determine whether emotional words would capture attention similarly in the two groups. Whilst the emotionality of words facilitated attention in typical comparison participants, this effect was attenuated in the ASD group. The magnitude of the emotional modulation of attention in ASD also correlated significantly with participants’ VIQ, which was not observed for the comparison group. Together these observations replicate and extend the findings of Corden et al. (J Autism Develop Disord 38:1072–1080, 2008) and implicate abnormalities in emotional processes outside the broader context of social cognition in ASD. We discuss our findings in relation to possible abnormalities in amygdala function that may underlie the disorder