Implicit and explicit memory in autism: Is autism an amnesic disorder?

Medial temporal lobe amnesic disorder is characterized by an impairment in explicit memory (e.g., remembering a shopping list) and intact implicit mem ory (e.g., a woman seems familiar although you cannot remember having met h er before). This study examined whether children with high-functioning auti sm have this same dissociation between explicit and implicit memory abiliti es. Children with autism and normal development participated in three memor y tasks: one implicit task (perceptual identification) and two explicit tas ks (recognition and recall). Children with autism showed intact implicit an d explicit memory abilities. However, they did not show the typical pat ter n of recalling more items from both the beginning and end of a list and ins tead only recalled items from the end of the list. These results do not sup port the theory that high-functioning autism is a type of medial temporal l obe amnesia. However, these findings suggest that persons with autism use d ifferent organizational strategies during encoding or retrieval of items fr om memory.