Episodic and semantic autobiographical memory in adults with autism spectrum disorders.

Crane et al. (2008) asked adults with autism to tell personal stories. They compared these stories to ones from adults without autism.

The team looked at two kinds of memory. Episodic memory is remembering your own past events. Semantic memory is knowing facts about your life, like your old address.

Adults with autism had trouble with episodic memory. They gave fewer rich, first-person stories from their teens and early twenties.

Their semantic memory stayed fine. They could still list facts about their past. The problem was only with reliving events.

Maddox et al. (2015) used brain scans to show why this happens. Adults with autism had quieter hippocampus and prefrontal areas while remembering. Quiet areas mean weaker relational encoding — the brain is not linking who, what, and where together.

Massand et al. (2015) found the same episodic dip using EEG. Early brain waves that mark true recognition were flat in adults with autism.

Bouck et al. (2016) seem to disagree at first. They saw normal proactive interference, a sign of healthy semantic memory. But the two studies actually match: Laura et al. already said semantic facts stay intact. Together they show a clean split — episodic fragile, semantic strong.

When you ask an adult client with autism about past behavior, do not rely on open "Tell me what happened." Their episodic recall is shaky. Instead, give choices or show photos to cue facts they still hold. Target intervention at building relational links — who was there, what came next — not just drilling rote answers.