Recall for self and other in autism: children's memory for events experienced by themselves and their peers.
Autistic kids recall other people's actions better than their own, so frame recall questions from a peer angle first.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team watched autistic and non-autistic kids play a simple game. Each child did the game once and watched a peer do it once.
Later the researchers asked, 'What happened?' They counted how many details each child recalled about their own turn and the peer's turn.
What they found
Typical kids remembered their own actions best. Autistic kids flipped the pattern: they recalled the peer's actions better than their own.
Kids with learning disabilities acted like the typical group, so the flip was specific to autism.
How this fits with other research
The same flip shows up in younger children. Faught et al. (2021) found that preschoolers with autism also give less specific memories about themselves.
Adults look different. Matson et al. (2013) saw that autistic adults recall as many details as peers, but they mix up who did what. The self-versus-other gap shrinks with age.
Hall (2010) ties the findings together. The review says social-communication gaps in autism make 'me' memories weaker, while memories about others stay stronger.
Why it matters
When you ask, 'What did you do at recess?' an autistic learner may draw a blank. Ask, 'What did your friend do?' and you may get a fuller story. Use this peer lens to build self-narratives: start with what others did, then link it back to the child's own role. The shift can boost eyewitness reports, social-story recall, and interview accuracy in clinic or school settings.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Research on memory processing suggests that memory for events that an individual experiences should be superior to that for similar events that someone else experiences (e.g., Baker-Ward et al., 1990). However, such predictions may not be applicable to individuals with autism. There are already suggestions that individuals with autism have specific difficulties in remembering (Boucher & Lewis, 1989). In addition, they are known to have more general difficulties involving processes related to the "self." If children with autism have difficulties in encoding information about themselves this could result in a deficit in personal episodic memory. The studies reported here compare memory for personally experienced events with that of memory for events experienced by a peer. An adaptation of a method devised by Boucher and Lewis has been employed to assess recall. Two separate studies were conducted to investigate whether children with autism are impaired at recalling personal events. Two groups of children took part in Study 1, a group of children with autism and a control group of typical children matched for verbal mental age. A group of children with moderate learning difficulties were employed in the second study to investigate whether the findings also occur in other groups of individuals who have learning disabilities. Findings indicate that, in the group with autism, events performed by the individual were recalled significantly less well than the observed events performed by a peer. However, the results for the nonautistic children in both studies showed that the opposite was true. Theoretical claims are discussed in the light of these findings.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2000 · doi:10.1023/a:1005455926727