Temporal Cognition in Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders: Tests of Diachronic Thinking

Abstract

Impaired diachronic thinking-(the propensity and capacity to think about events spreading across time)-was demonstrated in a 2-Phase study in which children with autism were compared with age and ability matched controls. Identical tests of diachronic thinking were administered in both phases of the study, but to different participant groups, with the same results. The marked impairments shown are therefore robust. Various non-temporal explanations of the findings were eliminated by the results of control tasks in Phase 2. Diachronic thinking did not correlate with verbal or non-verbal ability, age, or mentalising ability, consistent with other evidence of the specificity of diachronic thinking ability. Possible causes of impaired diachronic thinking in autism are discussed.

Assessing Recollection and Familiarity in Autistic Spectrum Disorders: Methods and Findings

“…Although not fully satisfactory as a test of recollection (for reasons discussed in the relevant Comment section), Experiment 1 showed that temporal source memory is impaired in individuals with LFA and, moreover, that this impairment is specific to this group and does not extend to learning disabled individuals without autism. This finding is consistent with findings of impaired temporal recency in individuals with HFA (Bennetto et al 1996), and of impaired time-related thinking in individuals with LFA (Boucher et al 2007).…”

“…A third reason for caution in interpreting findings from Experiment 1 as demonstrating impaired recollection in LFA is that other evidence suggests that individuals with ASDs may have a specific impairment of time-related thinking (Boucher et al 2007). In connection with this, it is noteworthy that performance on the TSM task did not correlate with any of our baseline measures, as was also the case in the studies reported by Boucher, Pons et al It has been suggested that time-related thinking is a specific ability independent of other abilities commonly used as indicators of intelligence (Pons and Montangero 1999).…”

Distrusting the present

“…Boucher et al (2007) explored mental time travel in autism. They found that individuals with autism show decreased diachronic cognition, concerning three aspects:…”

Preserved Proactive Interference in Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…Lind and Bowler (2008) reported that although very little work has directly assessed temporal cognition, there is evidence of impairment in this ability in ASD. This claim is based on the work of Boucher et al (2007) on diachronic thinking. In this study, the authors evaluated the ability to think about events that were spread across time using several measures/components and observed a consistent impairment in a sample of children with ASD.…”