Research On Association Memory Ability Of Autism Spectrum Disorders

Autism spectrum disorders(ASD) are a kind of developmental disorders, mainly for social communication disorders, restrictive interest and repetitive behaviors. Associative memory inserted in the various types of memory, plays a very important role in people’s memory, especially in the individual’s social competence and skills.In order to explore the ability and characteristics of associative memory about the faces of social stimulation of ASD, we design three eye tracking experiments, this study recruited 4 ~ 8 years old of children with ASD and 3~6 years old normal children(TD)for each 16, let them watch a series of associative memory pictures. The association of simple background and objects were showed in the first study; Study 2 showed the association of simple background and faces; the association of reality scene and faces were showed in the last study.The results found that: in the simple background/objects, the ability of associative memory of children with ASD has no significant difference with normal children, this ability of ASD about no-social stimulus consistent with normal children. However, we use the faces replace the no-social stimulus, the ability of associative memory is influenced by face processing delays, but the tendency of the associative memory ability is similar to those of normal children. Involvement with the processing of face and real scene image, children with ASD exhibited delayed associative memory ability. In conclusion, associative memory in children with ASD on non-social information is normal, and the ability of associative memory about faces of social stimuli is impaired, but the pattern is similar to normal children.