Episodic memory and self-awareness in Asperger Syndrome: Analysis of memory narratives

Chaput, Valérie; Amsellem, Frédérique; Urdapilleta, Isabel; Chaste, Pauline; Leboyer, Marion; Delorme, Richard; Goussé, Véronique

doi:10.1016/j.rasd.2013.05.005

Cited by 28 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Compared with neurotypical children and adults, children and adults with ASD exhibit poorer autobiographical memories. Their autobiographical memories are less specific compared with those of neurotypical persons, marked by more errors of omission, and less integrated (Bruck, London, Landa, & Goodman, 2007;Chaput et al, 2013;Goddard, Dritschel, Robinson, & Howlin, 2014).…”

Section: Asdmentioning

confidence: 94%

Telling Tales: Personal Event Narratives and Life Stories

Westby¹,

Culatta

2016

LSHSS

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To promote development of personal event narratives and life stories, speech-language pathologists can help clients retrieve information about interesting events, provide experiences worthy of narrating, and draw upon published narratives to serve as model texts. Clinicians can also address four interrelated processes in intervention: reminiscing, reflecting, making coherent connections, and signaling the plot structure. Furthermore, they can activate metacognitive awareness of how evaluations of experiences, coherence, and plot structure are signaled in well-formed personal event narratives and life stories.

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Section: Asdmentioning

confidence: 94%

Telling Tales: Personal Event Narratives and Life Stories

Westby¹,

Culatta

2016

LSHSS

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“…Memories are coded as “specific” if, in response to a cue, participants provide a narrative that is specific in time and place (e.g., “on my last birthday I went to Yogurtland with friends”); rather than a vague or repetitive occurrence. Using several variants of this task, autobiographical narratives in ASD have consistently been shown to be reduced in specificity, compared with control participants, in every reported study (Goddard et al, 2007 , 2014 ; Crane and Goddard, 2008 ; Crane et al, 2009 , 2010 , 2012 , 2013 ; Tanweer et al, 2010 ; Brezis et al, 2012 ; Chaput et al, 2013 ; Maister et al, 2013 ). In some cases, AM retrieval in individuals with ASD than is also slower and more effortful than for control participants (Goddard et al, 2007 ; Chaput et al, 2013 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…Further studies of the content of personal memories in ASD found striking differences in the topics raised by individuals with ASD and TD controls. For instance, youth with ASD are less likely to mention humans (e.g., family members), and more likely to mention non-humans, than TD youth (Brezis et al, 2012 ; Chaput et al, 2013 ). Given that difficulties in social-emotional processing are considered a core symptom of ASD, it is not surprising that individuals with autism have a reduced memory for social and emotional content (Souchay et al, 2013 ; Brezis et al, 2014 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Memory integration in the autobiographical narratives of individuals with autism

Brezis

2015

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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“…This approach is deemed important to ensure that memory for the event is uninfluenced by the interviewer. It is ineffective, however, for autistic individuals, who present with a distinct memory profile whereby episodic memory is typically reduced (see Gaigg & Bowler, 2018 ), particularly on tasks requiring a free narrative account of experienced events ( Adler et al, 2010 ; Bowler et al, 1997 , 2008 ; Chaput et al, 2013 ; Crane et al, 2009 , 2010 , 2012 ; Crane & Goddard, 2008 ; Goddard et al, 2007 ; Smith et al, 2007 ; Tanweer et al, 2010 ). Autistic individuals also often experience source monitoring difficulties on unsupported free recall tests; for example, in recollecting when, where or with whom an event occurred (e.g.…”

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confidence: 99%

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

Maras

Dando

Stephenson

et al. 2020

Autism

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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.

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Episodic memory and self-awareness in Asperger Syndrome: Analysis of memory narratives

Cited by 28 publications

References 31 publications

Telling Tales: Personal Event Narratives and Life Stories

Telling Tales: Personal Event Narratives and Life Stories

Memory integration in the autobiographical narratives of individuals with autism

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

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