Deficits in free recall persist in Asperger's syndrome despite training in the use of list-appropriate learning strategies.

The team worked with the adults who had Asperger’s Syndrome. They also tested the adults without autism who were the same age and IQ.

Everyone first tried to remember three word lists without help. Next, the researchers taught two memory tricks: group words by meaning or by sound. Then they tried the lists again.

Even after the lesson, the Asperger group recalled fewer words on every list. The tricks did not close the gap.

Their memory stayed weak no matter which trick they used. The authors say the problem is deeper than strategy use.

Eugenia Gras et al. (2003) saw the same recall gap four years earlier in the same lab. That paper also showed that people with Asperger’s add extra words that were never on the list. The new study extends that work by proving that teaching tricks does not fix the issue.

Daoust et al. (2008) found a similar drop in spoken recall, but with dream stories instead of word lists. Both studies point to a broad, content-wide recall weakness in verbally able adults with ASD.

At first glance, Boucher (2007) seems to disagree. One adult with Asperger’s wrote that he could remember well by using self-taught rules. The difference is method: the group experiment shows average failure, while the single case shows rare success. Both can be true.

If you teach a client a memory strategy and it flops, the paper says it is not your teaching. The client may still need picture cues, written lists, or apps that store the info for them. Build these supports into job coaching, college prep, and daily living goals instead of drilling more strategies.