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Illusory Memories of Emotionally Charged Words in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Further Evidence for Atypical Emotion Processing Outside the Social Domain

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Abstract

Recent evidence suggests that individuals with ASD may not accumulate distinct representations of emotional information throughout development. On the basis of this observation we predicted that such individuals would not be any less likely to falsely remember emotionally significant as compared to neutral words when such illusory memories are induced by asking participants to study lists of words that are orthographically associated to these words. Our findings showed that typical participants are far less likely to experience illusory memories of emotionally charged as compared to neutral words. Individuals with ASD, on the other hand, did not exhibit this emotional modulation of false memories. We discuss this finding in relation to the role of emotional processing atypicalities in ASD.

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Notes

  1. One may criticise our conclusions in this respect on the basis that we observed no Group × Emotion interaction in our analyses. It is important to note, however, that even if this interaction were significant, it would be irrelevant in relation to our predictions, since the main effect of Emotion may nevertheless be significant within each group (i.e. the effect could simply be larger in the Typical group) and this would suggest that both groups represented emotional words to some extent as qualitatively distinct. Our planned within-group analyses, therefore, are the most appropriate statistical analyses in relation to our predictions.

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  1. Autism Research Group, Department of Psychology, City University, Northampton Square, London, EC1V 0HB, UK

    Sebastian B. Gaigg & Dermot M. Bowler

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  1. Sebastian B. Gaigg
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  2. Dermot M. Bowler
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Correspondence to Sebastian B. Gaigg.

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Gaigg, S.B., Bowler, D.M. Illusory Memories of Emotionally Charged Words in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Further Evidence for Atypical Emotion Processing Outside the Social Domain. J Autism Dev Disord 39, 1031–1038 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-009-0710-y

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