Do importance instructions improve time-based prospective remembering in autism spectrum conditions?
Personal rewards boost time-based memory in neurotypical teens but leave autistic peers unchanged.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Altgassen et al. (2019) asked teens to remember to do a small task after a set time.
Half of the teens had autism; half were neurotypical.
The team told some kids the task would earn a personal reward. They told others it would help people.
What they found
Neurotypical teens remembered better when the reward was for themselves.
Autistic teens did not improve with personal rewards.
Type of motivation made no clear difference for the autism group.
How this fits with other research
Simó-Pinatella et al. (2013) first showed autistic youth struggle with time-based memory. They blamed weak theory of mind. Mareike et al. now add that sweetening the deal with personal prizes does not fix the gap.
Warnell et al. (2019) looked odd at first glance. They found autistic teens devalue future rewards more than peers, which seems to clash with Mareike’s flat reward effect. The gap fades when you see Rice measured delay discounting, not memory, and used cash choices, not a clock task.
Altgassen et al. (2012) pushed the same lab test to adults and still found no self-help tricks. Together the set warns: external prompts, not richer prizes, are needed across ages.
Why it matters
If you bank on “make it worth their while” to spark on-time actions, check the diagnosis first. For autistic learners, swap rewards for clear external cues like phone alarms or visual timers. Build scripts that tell them exactly when to start, not why it matters.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study explored the impact of motivation on the memory for delayed intentions (so-called, prospective memory, PM) in autistic individuals. Specifically, we were interested in the effects of personal (i.e., receiving a reward) as compared to social motivation (i.e., performing a favour for someone). Given the well-established theory of mind deficits in autism, we expected autistic individuals to benefit more strongly from personal than social importance manipulations, whereas the opposite pattern was predicted for controls. Sixty-one adolescents with autism and 61 typically developing adolescents participated, with each group distributed equally to one of the three motivation conditions of standard, social and personal reward. Participants worked on a 2-back picture-based ongoing task in which a time-based PM task was embedded. A mixed 2 (Group) x 3 (Motivation condition) analysis of covariance with age, verbal and non-verbal abilities as covariates and correct PM responses as dependent variable indicated solely a main effect of group, with controls outperforming the autism group. In contrast to our expectations, there was no main effect of condition, no significant interaction, and none of the covariates had any significant impact. However, further planned analyses revealed that controls only outperformed autistic individuals in the personal reward condition. Controls performed significantly best when a personal reward was promised, whereas there were no significant differences between the motivation conditions for autistic individuals. Findings are discussed in terms of underlying processes.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2019 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2019.04.008