Construction of Past and Future Events in Children and Adolescents with ASD: Role of Self-relatedness and Relevance to Decision-Making

Abstract

We studied episodic memory and future thinking for self-relevant and other-relevant events at different levels of retrieval support, theory of mind, and delay discounting in ASD children and adolescents (ASDs). Compared to typically developing controls, ASDs produced fewer internal (episodic) but a similar number of external (semantic) details while remembering past events, imagining future events, and imagining future events happening to others, indicating a general impairment of event construction. This deficit was driven by group differences under high retrieval support, and therefore unlikely to depend on self-initiated retrieval/construction deficits. ASDs' event construction impairment related to the severity of ASD symptoms, and to theory of mind deficits. ASDs, however, showed normal delay discounting, highlighting preserved forms of future-based decision-making in ASD.

Positive Effect of Visual Cuing in Episodic Memory and Episodic Future Thinking in Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…The impaired performances of participants with ASD on the free recall task were in accordance with their story recall performances (i.e., on the verbal episodic memory test), and mirror previous findings in individuals with ASD (Lind and Bowler, 2010; Brown et al, 2012; Lind et al, 2014a,b). Our data also corroborate the findings of previous studies on future thinking (Terrett et al, 2013; Ciaramelli et al, 2018). In addition, planning difficulties observed in the ASD participants may have contributed to this result.…”

“…We went beyond them by considering temporal distance and showing impairments of both near that may extend to distant future projections. These impairments may result from difficulty with scene construction, as suggested by Lind et al (2014b) and, more recently, by Ciaramelli et al (2018). These authors reported the production of fewer internal details (i.e., episodic), compared with TD controls, but similar numbers of external details (i.e., semantic).…”

“…The content of these memories is also more semantic (e.g., general or repeated event) than episodic (Bon et al, 2012; Crane et al, 2012, 2013; Terrett et al, 2013; Goddard et al, 2014; McDonnell et al, 2017). Ciaramelli et al (2018) recently reported that providing a series of standardized questions (e.g., “Where did this event take place”) does not seem to increase performance, either for past recollection or for future thinking. Similarly, difficulty retrieving specific memories is observed in children and adolescents with ASD, with poorer access to the remote past (8- to 17-year-olds; Goddard et al, 2014), and impaired episodic future thinking (8- to 12-year-olds; Terrett et al, 2013).…”

Social and delay discounting in autism spectrum disorder

“…Increased ASD discounting may also be explained by ASD participants assigning comparatively less value to both long‐term rewards and rewards to others, perhaps due to atypical perspective‐taking. Although atypical perspective‐taking in ASD is most frequently discussed in context of taking others' perspectives, there is also evidence for atypical simulation of one's future self (Ciaramelli et al, ; Terrett et al, ; but see Crane et al, ). Evidence from typical populations suggests that the perspective taking required in delay and social tasks may share a common neurocognitive basis (Hill, Yi, Spreng, & Diana, ), overlapping with that involved in theory of mind (O'Connell, Hsu, Christakou, & Chakrabarti, ).…”

“…For example, prospective episodic thinking about oneself increases the willingness to wait for rewards (e.g., Daniel, Stanton, & Epstein, ; Lin & Epstein, ; Peters & Büchel, ), and brain regions linked to perspective taking are consistently implicated in both delay (Lempert, Speer, Delgado, & Phelps, ; Soutschek, Ruff, Strombach, Kalenscher, & Tobler, ) and social discounting (Strombach et al, ). The use of discounting measures in ASD is especially relevant as there is currently disagreement about the degree and universality of perspective‐taking deficits in ASD, when either taking the perspective of one's future self (e.g., Ciaramelli et al, ; Crane, Lind, & Bowler, ; Terrett et al, ) or of others (Tager‐Flusberg, ). As delay and social discounting tasks are both well‐matched on task demands, if individuals with ASD show more discounting on both tasks when compared to typically developing (TD) individuals, it would provide new evidence for equivalent difficulties in perspective‐taking across self and other contexts.…”