Memory as a Discrimination Problem: Comparison of Retrieval between Participants with Asperger's Syndrome and Neurotypical Individuals

Background: It is now relatively well established that memory functioning in individuals with Asperger’s syndrome shows subtle and sometimes complex differences to what is observed in neurotypical controls.

Objectives: This study aimed to compare certain aspects of memory retrieval in individuals with Asperger’s syndrome and in matched neurotypical participants. 

Methods:  In the task called upon, participants first learned what the two favourite foods of each of three animals were. One food was unique to each animal while the second was either also unique or shared between 2 of the 3 animals. During the learning phase of the task, the number of trials necessary to reach 75% correct performance was measured as well as response times. Then a test phase examined the speed at which the correct animal could be identified depending on the cue provided. The conditions included presenting one unique cue, one shared cue, one unique plus one shared cue, or two unique cues.

Results: Preliminary results indicate that 1) more Asperger’s participants fail to reach criterion performance on the task; 2) the number of training blocs necessary to reach criterion is higher for the Asperger’s participants; 3) the pattern of performance in the learning and test phases is similar for controls and individuals with Asperger’s; 4) however, interestingly, in the actual post-training performance, individuals with Asperger’s outperform controls, i.e. they are faster to respond and their accuracy is comparable. 

Conclusions: Once the bindings between cues and targets had been learned, individual’s with Asperger’s syndrome outperformed controls – however, developing these bindings was more demanding for the participants with Asperger’s.