Experimental Studies On Memory In Autistic Spectrum Disorder Students

In recent two decades, research about children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) has drawn more and more attention from Chinese academics, and a lot of projects have been done in this area. Nevertheless, many theoretical and practical problems still has not been solved, Autism is still a mystery topic to be further investigated and understood. When we turned to look at the ASD students in special schools, we found that the students were still having great difficulties in their learning. Quite often the teachers are not sure of how to get a hand on teaching and training of these students, because they cannot accurately grasp the cognitive abilities and characteristics of these children, and lake of appropriate methods and strategies. As one of the basic cognitive abilities of the individual,memory capacity’s importance is self-evident. Memory difficulties precisely hinder children with ASD effective learning, living, and one of the important factors involved in social interaction. In theory, the level and characteristics of the proven low functioning children with ASD memory Help us to help more comprehensive understanding of the cognitive abilities and characteristics of children with ASD, provide the basis for further propose effective intervention strategies in practice.Therefore, the memory of the children with ASD research is a topic of theoretical and practical significance.This dissertation is based on a series of memories experiment results of low functioning ASD students in school. It mainly focuses on understanding different memory levels and characteristics of ASD students in prospective memory and retrospective memory (episodic memory, semantic memory), compared to the presence of students with mental retardation.This dissertation is divided into four parts: PART I is a review and summery of previous literature and materials via sorting out the relevant research data on prospective memory, episodic memory, autobiographical memory, semantic memory, implicit memory and other aspects of the ASD individuals and clarifying the research background. Based on the background, I raise the subject of the research, which is exploring the different levels and features of students with low-functioning autism spectrum disorders by a series of comparative experiments.PART II is about the experimental study on prospective memory of children with ASD, which is divided into three experiments. The first series is prospective memory experiments to study capacity and characteristics in different types of prospective memory of the low functioning ASD students. Experiment shows four results.(1) The performance of two groups was poor on the various types of prospective memory tasks. The level prospective memory of the subjects with ASD was significantly lower than the control group.(2) For ASD subjects, the type of memory material affected the test results of prospective memory. When the material was the animals in Cartoon, their prospective memory was significant insufficient.(3) Different sensory channels affects both the two groups were prospective memory, the two groups were showing some visual advantage.(4) The performance of two groups in the forward-looking task was not good, but there was no significant difference.PART Ⅲ is about the experimental study on retrospective memory of children with ASD, which is divided into two parts:episodic memory study and semantic memory study,a total of six experimental.Episodic memory experiments, which examined the ability and the characteristics of children with ASD on personal episodic memory (autobiographical memory, self-related) and story memory (with others) through interviews and story memory. Experiment shows two results.(1) In personal episodic memory experiments, the total number of words of the two groups showed no significant difference, however, the details of the ASD group were fewer.(2) In the story episodic memory experiments, there were significant differences between two groups.Semantic memory research, including explicit semantic memory experiments and implicit semantic memory experiments. through word clues and false memory examined the capabilities and characteristics of ASD students in explicit semantic memory. Two results were shown through experiment.(1) There was no significant difference between two groups of subjects, but the level of processing had an impact on their explicit semantic memory.(2) In the false memory experiments, there were no significant differences between groups. The recall of neutral words was better than emotional words and the hit rate of neutral words was also higher than the emotion words.Completing organizing of word and fuzzy picture recognition were used to examine the capabilities and characteristics of ASD students in implicit semantic memory. Experimental results show that there were no significant differences of the two groups. In the word completion experiment, priming effect did not appear, and the priming effect appeared in the fuzzy picture experiment, which told us that their ability of perceptual processing was superior to the concept of processing.PART IV is a comprehensive discussion about analyzing comprehensively of the literature study and the results of the experimental study of the paper,from three aspects are discussed:1)The similarities and differences in the memory characteristics between Low functioning children with ASD and children with intellectual disabilities.2) The relationship between memory impairment and social cognitive impairment and non-social cognitive impairment of Low functioning ASD.3) The relationship between Memory impairment and brain dysfunction of Low functioning ASD.PART V is about Inspiration and Prospects. Based on the conclusion of the comprehensive discussion, it puts forward suggestions on teaching low functioning ASD students in special schools, which are providing targeted and tailor-made training for ASD students with individual differences and individual differences of the internal memory capacity and this targeted approach needs to be reflected in both teaching content and methods. In future research we can consider the longitudinal study on memory of ASD individuals, in-depth study of the procedural memory, comparative study on the characteristics of individual memory of high and low functioning ASD, study on ASD individual memory strategies and intervention, as well as cognitive neuroscience research.