Metamemory in children with autism

Five experiments are reported comparing metamemory abilities in children wi th autism, age- and language-matched mentally retarded children, and langua ge-matched young normal controls. The mean language age of the participants in Experiment 1 was approximately 6 years, in Experiments 2, 3, and 4 appr oximately 8 years, and in Experiment 5 approximately 9 years. All the child ren were given one or more false belief tests. Experiment 1 assessed the ch ildren's understanding that a task variable (list length) and a person vari able (age) will affect their own and others' performances on an immediate a uditory-verbal recall task. Experiment 2 assessed the ability to utilize ca tegory cues in a picture recall task. Experiments 3 and 4 assessed the abil ity to verbalize strategies used in a memory span test and in one retrospec tive and two prospective memory situations. Experiment 5 assessed the child ren's knowledge and understanding of another person's memory. On the basis of available evidence and theory, we predicted that the children with autis m would be impaired on all the metamemory tasks and that impairment would b e associated with failure on tests of false belief. Our predictions were no t supported. The children with autism were not impaired on any of the metam emory tasks, although they were less likely than controls to make spontaneo us use of memory strategies involving other people. Unexpectedly few of the children failed the false belief tasks. These results are discussed in rel ation to theories concerning primary psychological deficits underlying auti sm.