The profile of memory function in children with autism.

A clinical memory test was administered to 38 high-functioning children with autism and 38 individually matched normal controls, 8-16 years of age. The resulting profile of memory abilities in the children with autism was characterized by relatively poor memory for complex visual and verbal information and spatial working memory with relatively intact associative learning ability, verbal working memory, and recognition memory. A stepwise discriminant function analysis of the subtests found that the Finger Windows subtest, a measure of spatial working memory, discriminated most accurately between the autism and normal control groups. A principal components analysis indicated that the factor structure of the subtests differed substantially between the children with autism and controls, suggesting differing organizations of memory ability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The structure of intelligence in children and adults with high functioning autism.

Confirmatory factor analyses of the commonly used 11 subtests of the Wechsler child and adult intelligence scales were accomplished for 137 children and 117 adults with high functioning autism (HFA) and for comparable age groups from the standardization samples contained in the Wechsler manuals. The objectives were to determine whether the structure of intelligence in HFA groups was similar to that found in the normative samples, and whether a separate "social context" factor would emerge that was unique to HFA. Four-factor models incorporating a Social Context factor provided the best fit in both the autism and normative samples, but the subtest intercorrelations were generally lower in the autism samples. Findings suggest similar organization of cognitive abilities in HFA, but with the possibility of underconnectivity or reduced communication among brain regions in autism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Is autism an amnesic disorder? Evidence from the California Verbal Learning Test.

An amnesic disorder has been postulated as an important etiological consideration in autism. A comparison was therefore made between 21 matched pairs of high-functioning autistic Ss and controls on 33 variables derived from the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT). 27 of these variables did not discriminate between the autistic Ss and controls. The 6 discriminating variables were free recall of Trial 5 of List A, free recall of List B, total intrusions for List A during the immediate- and short-delay recall trials, and the semantic-cluster and global-cluster ratios for List B. However, the mean scores for the autistic Ss were worse than those of the controls on 30 of the 33 CVLT variables. These findings fail to support the amnesic theory of autism but are consistent with reduced neural connectivity and deficits in information processing involved in the formation of cognitive strategies for efficient organization of information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Abstract reasoning in autism: A disassociation between concept formation and concept identification.

The concept identification and concept formation aspects of abstract reasoning were examined in 90 nonmentally retarded individuals with autism and 107 normal controls. It was hypothesized that pronounced deficits would be found on concept formation tests, whereas performance on concept identification tests would be relatively intact. There was a significant difference between individuals with autism and individuals from a matched control group on all abstract reasoning tasks, but, with the exception of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (R. K. Heaton et al., 1993), differences on concept identification tests were not clinically significant. Factor analyses showed that concept formation and concept identification tasks loaded on separate factors in the autism group but not in the control group. Stepwise discriminant function analyses revealed that 2 tests of concept formation correctly classified 78.4% of cases, whereas concept identification tasks did not pass the tolerance test. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Speech and language in high-functioning autistic individuals.

Verbal individuals with autism provide an important opportunity for investigating the qualitative nature of speech and language impairments in autism. In this study, a psychometric analysis of the language performance of 62 high-functioning autistic (HFA; Full Scale IQ and Verbal IQ?>?70) participants was compared with that of 50 control participants matched for age, IQ, gender, race, education, and family socioeconomic distribution. Tests were included to compare basic procedural linguistic skills with complex, interpretive linguistic skills. The HFA participants did as well as controls on basic procedural language tests, but significantly less well on tests of complex interpretive language abilities. This profile is consistent with neuropsychological reports of generalized deficits in complex information-processing abilities with preservation of basic skills in the same functional areas. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)