A Preliminary Study of Gender Differences in Autobiographical Memory in Children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder

Goddard, Lorna; Dritschel, Barbara; Howlin, Patricia

doi:10.1007/s10803-014-2109-7

Cited by 62 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…ASD patients frequently display atypical cognitive performance, such as impaired social cognition (Lai et al ., ), while object recognition is often intact (Dawson et al ., ). Interestingly, female patients demonstrate better access to emotionally salient memories than males (Goddard et al ., ). Consistent with these findings, we found that male, but not female, rats prenatally exposed to VPA showed deficits in social discrimination from infancy till adulthood.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Sex‐specific autistic endophenotypes induced by prenatal exposure to valproic acid involve anandamide signalling

Melancia

Schiavi

Servadio

et al. 2018

British J Pharmacology

110

102

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Sex‐specific autistic endophenotypes induced by prenatal exposure to valproic acid involve anandamide signalling

Melancia

Schiavi

Servadio

et al. 2018

British J Pharmacology

110

102

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“…Thus, by restricting our sample to high‐functioning ASD we successfully controlled for nonspecific, IQ‐related confounding effects on sleep–dependent memory, although the findings may not be considered representative for low‐functioning ASD children. Because our experimental design was tailored to minimize variance by recruiting homogeneous groups of boys only, we cannot generalize our findings to girls with ASD who may differ in memory processing from boys with ASD (Goddard, Dritschel, & Howlin, ). Furthermore, although analyses showed that the presence of comorbidities explained only a small amount of variance, future studies with larger samples should systematically investigate a possible contribution of comorbid diagnosis to the observed pattern.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Signs of enhanced formation of gist memory in children with autism spectrum disorder – a study of memory functions of sleep

Kurz

Conzelmann²,

Barth³

et al. 2019

Child Psychology Psychiatry

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BackgroundAutism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by impaired cognitive and social skills, including emotional dysregulation, and symptoms have been suspected to partly arise from impaired formation of memory representations regulating these behaviours. Sleep, which is subjectively impaired in ASD, is critical for forming long‐term memories and abstracted gist‐based representations. We expected a generally reduced memory benefit from sleep in children with ASD, and a diminished enhancement of gist representations, in particular.MethodsWe compared effects of sleep on memory consolidation between boys (9–12 years) with ASD (n = 21) and typically developing (TD, n = 20) boys, matched for age and IQ, in a within‐subjects crossover design. We employed an emotional picture recognition task and the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) word list task for assessing gist memory formation in the emotional and nonemotional domain, respectively. Learning took place before retention intervals of nocturnal sleep and daytime wakefulness, and retrieval was tested afterwards.ResultsSurprisingly, on the DRM task, children with ASD showed an enhanced sleep‐dependent formation of gist‐based memory (i.e. more recall of ‘critical lure words’ after sleep compared to wakefulness) than TD children, with this effect occurring on top of a diminished veridical word memory. On the picture recognition task, children with ASD also showed a stronger emotional enhancement in memory (i.e. relatively better memory for negative than neutral pictures) than TD children, with this enhancement occurring independent of sleep. Sleep polysomnography was remarkably comparable between groups.ConclusionsChildren with ASD show well‐preserved sleep‐dependent memory consolidation. Enhanced gist memory formation in these children might reflect a compensatory response for impairments at earlier stages of memory processing, that is during encoding.

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“…Analysis of non-core-symptoms was beyond the scope of this report; however, previous research has indicated differences between males and females in several specific domains including executive functioning (e.g. Bölte et al, 2011; Lai et al, 2012; Lemon et al, 2011), perceptual attention to detail and motor function (Lai et al, 2012), adaptive skills (Frazier et al, 2014), autobiographical memory (Goddard et al, 2014) and sleep habits (Hartley et al, 2009). Such factors could interact with core-symptom presentation and may contribute to a definition of sex-specific manifestations of the ASD phenotypes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does sex influence the diagnostic evaluation of autism spectrum disorder in adults?

Wilson

Murphy

McAlonan

et al. 2016

Autism

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It is unknown whether sex influences the diagnostic evaluation of autism spectrum disorder, or whether male and female adults within the spectrum have different symptom profiles. This study reports sex differences in clinical outcomes for 1244 adults (935 males and 309 females) referred for autism spectrum disorder assessment. Significantly, more males (72%) than females (66%) were diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder of any subtype (x2 = 4.09; p = 0.04). In high-functioning autism spectrum disorder adults (IQ > 70; N = 827), there were no significant sex differences in severity of socio-communicative domain symptoms. Males had significantly more repetitive behaviours/restricted interests than females (p = 0.001, d = 0.3). A multivariate analysis of variance indicated a significant interaction between autism spectrum disorder subtype (full-autism spectrum disorder/partial-autism spectrum disorder) and sex: in full-autism spectrum disorder, males had more severe socio-communicative symptoms than females; for partial-autism spectrum disorder, the reverse was true. There were no sex differences in prevalence of co-morbid psychopathologies. Sex influenced diagnostic evaluation in a clinical sample of adults with suspected autism spectrum disorder. The sexes may present with different manifestations of the autism spectrum disorder phenotype and differences vary by diagnostic subtype. Understanding and awareness of adult female repetitive behaviours/restricted interests warrant attention and sex-specific diagnostic assessment tools may need to be considered.

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A Preliminary Study of Gender Differences in Autobiographical Memory in Children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder

Cited by 62 publications

References 49 publications

Sex‐specific autistic endophenotypes induced by prenatal exposure to valproic acid involve anandamide signalling

Sex‐specific autistic endophenotypes induced by prenatal exposure to valproic acid involve anandamide signalling

Signs of enhanced formation of gist memory in children with autism spectrum disorder – a study of memory functions of sleep

Does sex influence the diagnostic evaluation of autism spectrum disorder in adults?

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