Scene construction and autobiographical memory retrieval in autism spectrum disorder.

Andrews et al. (2024) pulled together every paper they could find on how autistic people remember their own lives.

They looked for patterns that might explain why personal stories often feel vague or jumbled.

The team paid special attention to ‘scene construction’—the brain’s knack for rebuilding a place in mind.

Across studies, autistic people often struggle to picture the where and when of past events.

The authors say this scene-building step may be a separate skill that can be taught.

If true, you could shore up memory by first teaching a client to draw a clear mental room.

Agiovlasitis et al. (2025) scanned autistic adults and saw weak activity in the retrosplenial complex—the exact brain zone that lights up when typical people imagine scenes.

That fMRI result gives flesh to the target paper’s idea: poor scene pictures equal poor memories.

Godfrey et al. (2023) add that autistic adults also skip ‘thematic gist’—the big point of a story.

Together the three papers form a chain: weak brain scene code → patchy mental picture → missed story moral.

No clash here; each study zooms in on a different link of the same chain.

If scene construction is trainable, you can add quick visualization drills before you ask for personal recall.

Try having the learner sketch or model the room where an event happened, then tell the story.

A five-minute scene warm-up may give you richer self-talk targets and stronger social stories down the line.