An Eye-Movement Study of relational Memory in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Persons with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) demonstrate good memory for single items but difficulties remembering contextual information related to these items. Recently, we found compromised explicit but intact implicit retrieval of object-location information in ASD (Ring et al. Autism Res 8(5):609–619, 2015). Eye-movement data collected from a sub-sample of the participants are the focus of the current paper. At encoding, trial-by-trial viewing durations predicted subsequent retrieval success only in typically developing (TD) participants. During retrieval, TD compared to ASD participants looked significantly longer at previously studied object-locations compared to alternative locations. These findings extend similar observations recently reported by Cooper et al. (Cognition 159:127–138, 2017a) and demonstrate that eye-movement data can shed important light on the source and nature of relational memory difficulties in ASD.

Spatial navigation from same and different directions: The role of executive functions, memory and attention in adults with autism spectrum disorder

“…Indeed, when looking at the relevance of executive functions for egocentric and allocentric navigation performance in the current study, perseverative errors in the IED task were a significant predictor, again emphasizing the relevance of the influence of executive functions in memory and navigation performance in ASD [see Maister et al, 2013]. A third important factor to consider is attention at encoding, as indicated by a number of previous studies [see Cooper, Plaisted-Grant, Baron-Cohen, & Simons, 2017;Gaigg, Bowler, Ecker, Calvo-Merino, & Murphy, 2015;Loth, G omez, & Happ e, 2011;Ring, Bowler, & Gaigg, 2017]. In the current study, ASD compared to TD individuals looked for a significantly shorter time and less often at the two landmarks marking the intersections, which may in part explain their later difficulties in remembering the landmarks on the item tests.…”

“…A third important factor to consider is attention at encoding, as indicated by a number of previous studies [see Cooper, Plaisted‐Grant, Baron‐Cohen, & Simons, ; Gaigg, Gardiner, & Bowler, ; Gaigg, Bowler, Ecker, Calvo‐Merino, & Murphy, 2015; Loth, Gómez, & Happé, ; Ring, Bowler, & Gaigg, ]. In the current study, ASD compared to TD individuals looked for a significantly shorter time and less often at the two landmarks marking the intersections, which may in part explain their later difficulties in remembering the landmarks on the item tests.…”

Relational memory weakness in autism despite the use of a controlled encoding task

“…Importantly, the relational binding account has not always been supported by previous findings. Some studies report that autistic individuals show difficulties restricted to item memory ( Solomon et al, 2016 ; Cooper et al, 2017a ), weaknesses in both item and relational memory ( Cooper et al, 2015 ; Massand and Bowler, 2015 ; Ring et al, 2016 ; Semino et al, 2018 ; Mogensen et al, 2020 ), or intact item and relational memory ( Souchay et al, 2013 ; Lind et al, 2014 ; Ring et al, 2015 , 2017 ; Hogeveen et al, 2020 ). One possible explanation for discrepant findings is that task complexity differed across item-specific and relational memory tasks in these experiments (e.g., as in Bowler et al, 2014 ).…”

“…Specifically, amnesic patients show standard effects of stimulus repetition in patterns of viewing, but eye-movement-based relational memory effects are impaired (e.g., Ryan et al, 2000 ). In studies of autism, eye tracking has been used to examine the exploration of social stimuli (with differences in viewing reported; see Chita-Tegmark (2016) ; Papagiannopoulou et al (2014) for reviews), but only a handful of previous studies have used this method to address questions about the integrity of long-term memory ( Loth et al, 2011 ; Ring et al, 2017 ; Cooper et al, 2017a ).…”

“…To our knowledge, one eye-tracking study has explicitly used a relational memory task in an autism population ( Ring et al, 2017 ), and results revealed between-groups differences in retrieval-related eye movements. During test phase trials, three locations were marked in previously studied scenes – one corresponding to the location that was occupied by a studied object and two previously unoccupied locations.…”