Emotional Reminiscing and Autobiographical Memory among Preschool Children with ASD: Considering Difficulties, Strengths, and Predictors

Autobiographical memory (AM), which refers to memory for information related to the self and personally experienced events, is a socially-relevant cognitive skill that is essential to examine in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a condition defined along a continuum of socio-communicative functioning. The profile of AM strengths and weaknesses during the preschool period remains unclear in ASD, and little is known regarding predictors of AM during early childhood. To address this gap in the literature, 17 preschool-aged children (ages 4-6) with ASD and 21 typically-developing children matched on age, gender, and expressive language completed two measures of AM, including collaborative and independent recall tasks (Autobiographical Memory Test-Preschool Version). Children completed standardized measures of executive and self-functioning. Mother child dyads completed an emotional reminiscing task, and dialogues were rated for children’s memory contributions and maternal open-ended, closed-ended, emotional, and off-topic elaborations. Children with ASD required more prompting to complete AM tasks and demonstrated difficulties with AM performance in independent and collaborative recall contexts, including reduced AM specificity. Regarding executive functioning, working memory only predicted AM specificity in the ASD group, supporting that EF is an important compensatory mechanism facilitating AM retrieval in ASD. Regarding self-related factors, theory of mind predicted AM specificity for ASD and TD children whereas self-concept predicted AM specificity in the ASD group only. Mothers of children with ASD utilized distinct reminiscing strategies, including more closed-ended and off-topic elaborations. Maternal open-ended elaborations promoted children’s AM in both independent and collaborative recall contexts for the ASD group. Limitations and theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.