The Mental Time Travel In Autism Spectrum Disorder Children

Mental time travel refers to humanity project themself into the past which is alsoknown as episodic memory, as well as, into the future to experience future events.Episodic memory is also thought defined as personal memory placed in specific time andspecific place, and it constitute long–term memory with semantic memory. Mental timetravel relies on default network which includes medial frontal, medial temporal lobe,cingulate gyrus and so on. But it’s not clear which is the core function of default network,“self projection” or“scene construction”. While the ASD (autism spectrum disorder) alsohave impairment on default network, especially on frontal cortex, and they also havedefect on episodic memory. Therefore, this study explores the characteristic of mental timetravel of ASD.Twelve ASD children in Dalian and twelve typical children who are matched inintelligence were asked to complete three experimental procedures including semanticmemory task, episodic memory card recall task and future thinking task.Conclusions:(a)Children with ASD have damage in general knowledge,and havedifficult in using information to improve memory.(b)Children with ASD relies more on theitem familiarity,rather than on the specific time and place in episodic memory.(c)Childrenwith ASD have significant impairment in future thinking.In conclusion, Children with ASD have significant impairment in mental time travel，they were significantly and equally diminished in each condition. Given that mental timetravel tasks asked to be completed by children with ASD involve self-projection, wesuggest the underlying difficulty with episodic memory/future thinking is one of “selfprojection”.