Fractionation of visual memory: agency detection and its impairment in autism

It is known that the adult visual memory system is fractionable into functi onally independent cognitive subsystems, selectively susceptible to brain d amage. In addition, there have been hints from studies with individuals wit h autism that these cognitive subsystems can fractionate developmentally. H owever, there has been a paucity of systematic investigations. The present study involves the analysis of visual memory of a population of individuals with autism and age- and VIQ-matched comparison individuals. The individua ls with autism presented selective impairments in face recognition in compa rison to both the age- and VIQ-matched comparison populations. In addition, they were impaired relative to the age-matched comparison group on recogni tion memory for potential agents (i.e. objects capable of self-propelled mo tion) whether they were living (cats and horses) or non-living (motorbikes) . In contrast, they were selectively superior relative to the VIQ-matched c omparison group on recognition memory for such objects as topographical sti muli (buildings) and leaves that clearly do not have agency. The data is in terpreted in terms of reduced sensitivity to agency cues in individuals wit h autism and general information processing capacity. (C) 2001 Elsevier Sci ence Ltd. All rights reserved.