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Abstract:
Investigations of memory in individuals with autism have
consistently reported impairments in free recall in the presence of
intact cued recall and recognition memory. Tulving has argued that
free recall employs the episodic memory system, in which recall is
accompanied by a distinct recollective experience and can be
measured experimentally in a recognition memory paradigm by asking
subjects to indicate whether they consciously 'remember' a
study-list item, or whether they just 'know' that it was on the
list, without recollection of the specific episode. In view of the
hypothesised link between free recall and episodic memory, we asked
high-functioning individuals with autism (HFA) and controls matched
on age, gender and verbal IQ. to study lists of high- and
low-frequency words and, after a delay, to indicate whether they
remembered having seen a study list item before. We found that the
HFA subjects were not impaired in their overall recognition but
that they made fewer 'remember' and more 'know' responses than
controls, indicating an impaired episodic memory system.
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