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Procedural Memory

  • Reference work entry
Encyclopedia of Autism Spectrum Disorders

Definition

Procedural learning refers to the process by which skills are acquired implicitly (without conscious recall) through repeated exposure to and practice of a task (Squire, 1986).

Historical Background

The discovery of the disassociation between memory that could be expressed verbally and accessed consciously (i.e., declarative memory) and experience-based brain adaptation that occurred implicitly (i.e., procedural memory) developed principally from the study of amnestic patients in the 1970s (Squire, 1986). As discussed in Current Knowledge, in the intervening decades, a number of paradigms have been developed to assess various manifestations of procedural learning. The number of studies explicitly investigating procedural learning in autism has increased over the last few years.

Current Knowledge

Introduction

Procedural learning forms the basis for the development of many cognitive and behavioral skills and is understood to result from plasticity in action-oriented brain...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kennedy Krieger Institute, 707 North Broadway, 21230, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Dr. Joshua Ewen (Director of Clinical Neurophysiology Laboratory)

  2. Kennedy Krieger Institute, 707 North Broadway, 21205, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Dr. Stewart Mostofsky (Director of the Laboratory of Neurocognitive and Imaging Research)

Authors
  1. Dr. Joshua Ewen
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  2. Dr. Stewart Mostofsky
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Joshua Ewen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Irving B. Harris Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics and Psychology Yale University School of Medicine, Chief, Child Psychiatry Children's Hospital at Yale-New Haven Child Study Center, New Haven, CT, USA

    Fred R. Volkmar (Director, Child Study Center) (Director, Child Study Center)

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Ewen, J., Mostofsky, S. (2013). Procedural Memory. In: Volkmar, F.R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Autism Spectrum Disorders. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1698-3_1740

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1698-3_1740

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-1697-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-1698-3

  • eBook Packages: Behavioral Science

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