Memory in autism spectrum disorder: a meta-analysis of experimental studies

What is it about?

Although memory performance is not one of the diagnostic criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder, clinicians have often commented on particular patterns of memory performance in this population. But the findings of individual experimental studies are sometimes inconclusive or contradictory, often because studies have small numbers of participants. We used Meta-analysis, a statistical technique that pools data from different studies, to analyse data from 2,923 autistic and 2877 non-autistic participants to gain a clearer and more reliable picture of how autsitic people remember different types of information over the short- and long-term.

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Why is it important?

Our findings support the view that comppared to non-autistic people, autistic individuals show small but reliable difficulties in memory over the short and the long term. These differences are more pronounced for visual than for verbal material, and on unsupported retrieval tasks such as free recall. Supported tasks, such as cued recall or recognition, present few difficulties. These findings go against the popular view that autistic people have exceptional memory and, more importantly, provide a robust rationale for interventions based on supported test procedures.