Working Memory – Dr Martin Fracker

How Does Autism Spectrum Disorder Affect a Person’s Memory?

If you know an individual with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), you may have noticed that they may be very good at remembering certain kinds of things such as calendar dates. There have been many studies examining how ASD may affect a person’s memory, but the results have been complex and difficult to explain. Poirier and colleagues decided to look more closely at how working memory (also known as “short-term memory”) may differ between ASD and neurotypical individuals. In three experiments, they had ASD and neurotypical individuals perform variations of a verbal serial recall task.

These researchers found that individuals with ASD could remember the verbal items just as well as neurotypical individuals but they had more trouble remembering the order in which the verbal information appeared.

Paying Full Attention is Crucial When Learning New Information

Some people claim they can learn new information while their attention is divided. Think of the college student who is watching television while studying for an exam. Such claims appear not to be true. Murphy and colleagues evaluated the ability of participants to learn new information while dividing their attention between studying a list of words and performing a secondary auditory detection task. They found that, compared to participants who could devote their full attention to studying the list of words, participants with divided attention performed less well in recalling the list of words later. Interestingly, the effect of divided attention while recalling the list of words was less severe. Does this mean that while students should not watch television while studying, it would be okay for them to listen to a baseball game while taking their final exam? Perhaps, but I wouldn’t recommend it!

Eye Movements Reveal How We Remember Visualspatial Information

When we have to learn something new, that new information has to get through what you might think of as “gates”: first it has to be perceived, then pass into working (or short-term) memory, and then finally into long-term memory. Moving information from working to long-term memory usually requires rehearsal, like repeating someone’s name to yourself over and over again until you have it memorized. This experiment by Sahan and colleagues shows that the same is true of visual information and answers the question: how exactly do we rehearse visual information? Their answer: we rehearse visual information with help from our eyes!