Effects of delay on episodic memory retrieval by children with autism spectrum disorder

Almeida, Telma Sousa; Lamb, Michael E.; Weisblatt, Emma

doi:10.1002/acp.3524

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 87 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Compared to open questions and semantic prompting, more detailed and explicit questioning using V-VPs resulted in an overall improvement in specificity (as well as episodic relevance) for both autistic and TD groups, supporting the utility of the task support hypothesis (Bowler et al, 1997(Bowler et al, , 2004 in more applied settings, in line with previous findings within the CJS context (e.g. Almeida et al, 2019;Maras et al, 2013;Mattison et al, 2018;McCrory et al, 2007). The explicit V-VP prompts may reduce demands on relational retrieval processes (known to be a source of difficulty for autistic people; see Gaigg & Bowler, 2018), which would typically aid the reconstruction of the event's narrative with relations between specific details (who did what, to whom, where, when, etc.).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Interviewing autistic adults: Adaptations to support recall in police, employment, and healthcare interviews

Norris

Crane

Maras

2020

Autism

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recalling specific past experiences is critical for most formal social interactions, including when being interviewed for employment, as a witness or defendant in the criminal justice system, or as a patient during a clinical consultation. Such interviews can be difficult for autistic adults under standard open questioning, yet applied research into effective methods to facilitate autistic adults’ recall is only recently beginning to emerge. The current study tested the efficacy of different prompting techniques to support autistic adults’ recall of specific personal memories; 30 autistic and 30 typically developing adults (intelligence quotients > 85) were asked to recall specific instances from their past, relevant to criminal justice system, healthcare, and employment interviews. Questions comprised ‘open questions’, ‘semantic prompting’ (where semantic knowledge was used to prompt specific episodic retrieval) and ‘visual–verbal prompting’ (a pie-diagram with prompts to recall specific details, for example, who, what, and where). Half the participants received the questions in advance. Consistent with previous research, autistic participants reported memories with reduced specificity. For both groups, visual–verbal prompting support improved specificity and episodic relevance, while semantic prompting also aided recall for employment questions (but not health or criminal justice system). Findings offer new practical insight for interviewers to facilitate communication with typically developing and autistic adults. Lay abstract During many types of interviews (e.g. in employment, with the police, and in healthcare), we need to recall detailed memories of specific events, which can be difficult for autistic people in response to commonly used questions. This is especially because these tend to be open questions (i.e. very broad). Autistic people have disproportionately high rates of physical and mental health conditions, are more likely to interact with police, and are the most underemployed disability group. However, interviewers are often unsure about how to adapt their communication for autistic people. Our research tested whether different types of prompts enabled autistic people to recall specific memories (memories of a single event within one day). Participants were asked about situations relating to witnessing a crime (e.g. at the bank), physical or mental health scenarios and employment interviews (e.g. a time you’ve met a deadline). We tested the following: Open questions: basic questions only (e.g. ‘tell me about a time you went to the cinema’), Semantic prompting: a general prompt (e.g. ‘do you enjoy going to the cinema?’) before asking for a specific instance (‘tell me about a time you went to the cinema?’), Visual–verbal prompting: asking participants to recall when it happened, who was there, the actions that occurred, the setting, and any objects. With visual–verbal prompting, autistic and typically developing participants’ memories were more specific and detailed. Semantic prompting was also effective for employment questions. Our study shows that autistic people can recall specific memories when they are appropriately prompted. Visual–verbal prompting may be effective across different situations.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

“…Maras et al, 2013) and increase the amount of accurate information reported (e.g. Almeida et al, 2019;Mattison et al, 2015Mattison et al, , 2018.…”

Section: Lay Abstractmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interviewing autistic adults: Adaptations to support recall in police, employment, and healthcare interviews

Norris

Crane

Maras

2020

Autism

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It is also important to note that the present study utilised a relatively short delay of around 30 min; in real life, it is unlikely that a witness would receive a formal investigative interview this soon after witnessing a crime. Nonetheless, the current findings demonstrate that autistic witnesses can provide testimony that is accurate as TD witnesses when interviewed shortly after the event, highlighting the importance of conducting witness interviews as soon as possible (see also Almeida et al, 2019aAlmeida et al, , 2019b. If anything, the benefit of WAFA may be even greater with longer delays, but future research should examine this, alongside its impact on account coherence.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 64%

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

Maras

Dando

Stephenson

et al. 2020

Autism

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Autistic people experience social communication difficulties alongside specific memory difficulties than 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 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 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 typically developing witnesses recalled fewer details with less accuracy from the scrambled video, Witness-Aimed First Account interviews resulted in more detailed and accurate recall from autistic and typically developing witnesses, for both scrambled and unscrambled videos. The Witness-Aimed First Account technique may be a useful tool to improve autistic and typically developing witnesses’ accounts within a legally appropriate, non-leading framework. Lay abstract Autistic people may be more likely to be interviewed by police as a victim/witness, yet they experience social communication difficulties alongside specific memory difficulties that can impact their ability to recall information from memory. Police interviewing techniques do not take account of these differences, and so are often ineffective. We developed a new technique for interviewing autistic witnesses, referred to a Witness-Aimed First Account, which was designed to better support differences in the way that autistic witnesses process information in memory. The Witness-Aimed First Account technique encourages witnesses to first segment the witnessed event into discrete, parameter-bound event topics, which are then displayed on post-it notes while the witness goes onto freely recall as much information as they can from within each parameter-bound topic in turn. Since witnessed events are rarely cohesive stories with a logical chain of events, we also explored autistic and non-autistic witnesses’ recall when the events were witnessed in a random (nonsensical) order. Thirty-three autistic and 30 typically developing 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 non-autistic witnesses recalled fewer details with less accuracy from the scrambled video, Witness-Aimed First Account interviews resulted in more detailed and accurate recall from both autistic and non-autistic witnesses, for both scrambled and unscrambled videos. The Witness-Aimed First Account technique may be a useful tool to improve witnesses’ accounts within a legally appropriate, non-leading framework.

show abstract

“…However, people with ASD performed lower than those with TD on delayed recognition. Previous studies have reported that the amount of information recalled decreases over time for people with ASD (Almeida et al, 2019;Gaigg & Bowler, 2008). This is a possible atypical characteristic of memory consolidation in people with ASD.…”

Section: Recognitionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Memory for actions and reality monitoring in adults with autism spectrum disorder

Yamamoto

Masumoto

2023

Memory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Reality monitoring is the cognitive process of distinguishing between internally and externally generated information sources such as imagined and performed actions. The purpose of this study was to examine self-self-monitoring with action in people with autism, which has not been examined previously, using subject performed tasks along with free recall and recognition. Twenty adults with ASD and 20 adults with typical development (TD) participated in this study.Participants memorized action sentences such as 'write in pencil' and "under imagined, pantomime, or enacted conditions." Free recall, yes/no recognition, and reality monitoring tests were conducted immediately after and one week later. There was no difference in reality monitoring between the ASD and TD groups. The free recall and recognition performance of the ASD group was lower than that of the TD group. The results of the present study support the previously reported finding of unimpaired retrospective mechanisms of sense of agency related to reality monitoring in people with ASD. Moreover, low levels of free recall and recognition were discussed regarding difficulties in memory reconstruction and consolidation.

show abstract

Effects of delay on episodic memory retrieval by children with autism spectrum disorder

Cited by 9 publications

References 87 publications

Interviewing autistic adults: Adaptations to support recall in police, employment, and healthcare interviews

Interviewing autistic adults: Adaptations to support recall in police, employment, and healthcare interviews

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

Memory for actions and reality monitoring in adults with autism spectrum disorder

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About