THE EFFECT OF SEMANTIC AND EMOTIONAL CONTEXT ON WRITTEN RECALL FOR VERBAL LANGUAGE IN HIGH-FUNCTIONING ADULTS WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER

Objective-Several deficits have been proposed to account for cognitive impairment in autism including an inability to comprehend the perspec tives of others (''theory of mind''), an inability to process emotiona l information, and difficulty drawing together diverse information in context (''central coherence''). Because context (central coherence) a nd emotion can influence memory, a study was designed to show if autis m spectrum disorder was associated with impaired utilisation of contex t and emotion in recall; and if impairments in theory of mind processi ng would influence recall in autism spectrum disorder. Methods-Ten hig h functioning subjects with autism spectrum disorder and 13 age and IQ matched controls were tested using recall tests. In the first coheren ce memory test, subjects listened to a series of word lists that were in varying degrees of syntactic and semantic (coherent) order and were asked to recall the words. In the second coherence memory test, subje cts listened to stories consisting of sentences that were, or were not , in logical (coherent) order. In the emotional memory test, the subje cts listened to sentences that were highly emotional or nonemotional. In the theory of mind test, the subjects Listened to stories requiring varying levels of understanding of the perspectives of others. Result s-There were no significant differences between groups in recall of co herent versus incoherent word Lists, nor was there a significant diffe rence between groups in recall of coherent versus incoherent stories. However, the control subjects recalled more of the emotional than non- emotional sentences, whereas the autism spectrum disorder group did no t show such a difference. No significant difference existed in recall of stories requiring varying levels of understanding of the perspectiv es of others among subjects with autism spectrum disorder, and subject s with autism spectrum disorder did not differ from control subjects i n the influence of theory of mind content on story recall. Conclusion- The study shows that memory in high functioning adults with autism spe ctrum disorder is facilitated by emotional content to a lesser degree than it is facilitated by coherence. Therefore, impairments in emotion al processing cannot be considered as simply an effect of the ''weak c entral coherence'' theory in autism spectrum disorder. Whereas the rea sons for this emotional deficit are unknown, evidence of abnormalities of the limbic structures in autism spectrum disorder may provide an a natomical explanation.