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Inner speech is used to mediate short-term memory, but not planning, among individuals with autism spectrum disorder

Williams, David M., Bowler, Dermot M., Jarrold, Christopher (2012) Inner speech is used to mediate short-term memory, but not planning, among individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Development and Psychopathology, 24 (1). pp. 225-239. ISSN 0954-5794. (doi:10.1017/S0954579411000794) (KAR id:33525)

Abstract

Evidence regarding the use of inner speech by individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is equivocal. To clarify this issue, the current study employed multiple techniques and tasks used across several previous studies. In Experiment 1, participants with and without ASD showed highly similar patterns and levels of serial recall for visually-presented stimuli. Both groups were significantly affected by the phonological similarity of items to be recalled, indicating that visual material was spontaneously recoded into a verbal form. Confirming that short-term memory is typically verbally mediated among the majority of people with ASD, recall performance among both groups declined substantially when inner speech use was prevented by the imposition of articulatory suppression during the presentation of stimuli. In Experiment 2, planning performance on a Tower of London task was substantially detrimentally affected by articulatory suppression among comparison participants, but not among participants with ASD. This suggests that planning is not verbally mediated in ASD. Importantly, the extent to which articulatory suppression affected planning among participants with ASD was uniquely associated with the degree of their observed and self-reported communication impairments. This confirms a link between interpersonal communication with others and intrapersonal communication with self as a means of higher-order problem-solving.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1017/S0954579411000794
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Psychology
Depositing User: David Williams
Date Deposited: 05 Apr 2013 09:50 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:10 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/33525 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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