Planning and Prospective Memory Performance in Autism Spectrum Disorders: Comparisons Between Laboratory-Based Performance and Performance in Everyday Life

Background:

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often show difficulties to organize and coordinate everyday activities. They are impaired in time management, preparation and sequencing of actions. These deficits with planning ahead have been found in time-based prospective memory tasks (PM; Altgassen et al., in press) and multi-tasking paradigms (Mackinlay et al., 2006) in the laboratory.

Objectives:

The present study compared laboratory-based PM performance with everyday performance in individuals with ASD.

Methods:

Nineteen children with high-functioning ASD and 19 age- and ability-matched neurotypical controls completed an event-based PM task that was embedded in a visuo-spatial working memory task. Everyday planning performance was assessed with proxy ratings (DEX-Questionnaire, Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire).

Results:

Analyses of variance (ANOVAs) indicated no group differences in the event-based PM task (F(1,36)=.55, p>.05). However, regarding ratings of everyday performance significant group effects were revealed with the ASD group being rated as showing poorer performance in both measures (DEX: F(1, 36)=43.89, p < .001; PRMQ: F(1,36)=15.58, p<.001). Correlational analyses indicated relations between laboratory-based and everyday performance (DEX r=-.36, p<.01; PRMQ r=-28, p<.05).

Conclusions:

Individuals with ASD showed spared performance in a laboratory-based event-based PM task. This is in contrast to proxies’ ratings of everyday difficulties with planning tasks in participants with ASD and previous research on laboratory-based time-based PM performance (Altgassen et al., in press). Everyday PM tasks and time-based PM tasks are less structured than event-based PM tasks and demand more self-initiated processing which may underlie the here reported ASD deficit. Importantly, ratings of everyday performance and laboratory-based performance were related, thus, indicating that generally poorer laboratory-based performance was associated with more deficits in daily life.