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visual memory - back to the future

longman

Just got my copy of Your Autism Magazine Spring 2014, which has an article about research on visual memory "Back to the future" p10. This is research at Durham University looking at memory and future thinking in people with autism.

I would like to have seen the full paper but the link would only allow free access to Issue 1 for 2013, which didn't contain the paper.

What puzzled me hugely is that they compared the verbally expressed recollections of a shopping trip or "standing by a small stream deep in a forest" or a personal experience in the future.

They found that intellectually able "adults with autism gave significantly less rich and detailed descriptions of remembered and imagined events and fictitious scenes than neurotypical adults".

This astounded me because I've read so much about the vividness of pictorial memory reported by many adults with autism. The results of the research, amongst other things, concludes that adults wuith autism have difficulty creating scenes in their minds - more fuel to the "lacks imagination" lobby.

They did give the same level of description of scenes in a wordless picture book as NTs, so they are suggesting the memory problemn is not down to language differences, or difficulties piecing together information.

But hold it.....what about socialising differences? NTs connect their memories with shared social experiences, especially with regard to shopping trips! An adult with autism is unlikely to create a mental image for social reasons, and may not as readily see the need to create a fictitious image.

OK so I haven't seen the full research, and NAS could only do a page with a big photo on the research.

But I do come across a lot of research on autism, along similar lines, which fails to take account of the social input. People with autism may not have the same need to describe an imagined scene to others.

Most academic research requires a considerable amount of thought to be given to influencing factors. It seems to be a constant failing of psychology and psychiatry research, which uses one or two rather glib checked for contributions from other variables. And they often use small study populations, like 5-10 subjects (individuals), where other disciplines would test 100 or 300 subjects or more.

It just doesn't ring true to me that adults with autism would significantly lack visual memory. 

  • Yes.  I have processing delays with some things, so my brain would be engaged on processing the previous information, or perhaps we use a different brain pathway to daydream, or perhaps we are intensely analysing things whilst daydreaming.

    If only these ruddy people would ask us what we're doing and allow us to input!

  • Which exactly illustrates my concerns about "back to the future"

    In the University of California research about daydreaming, subjects with and without autism had to do counting tasks while attached to the scanner, with rest periods in between where they looked at a cross in the screen.

    The were looking for daydreaming activity in the brain during those rest periods. People with autism showed less of this brain activity so - they don't daydream!

    But what about the impact of stress and anxiety? Were the subjects with autism too tensed up to daydream?  Also were the subjects with autism still processing the numbers in the intervals?

    There is just an amazing amount of pointless research going on. I'm not saying that what they were trying to do is pointless, because such experiments are valid, with proper controls. But to what extent do they take into account factors to explain why people with autism wouldn't daydream in those circumstances?

    Wake up and smell the coffee - (as they say way too much nowadays). Why are we not getting any further towards understanding autism day-to-day? Answer - too much time spent trying to sustain research excellence.

  • It reminds me of the research that says that people with autism don't daydream. 

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4751075.stm

    I beg to differ.  Big time.

  • My message to NAS is that, while it is interesting to read about what current research is ongoing on autism, it would help if NAS could provide a lead on ensuring that the research is sound and productive.

    We are at the mercy of the university system. To do well as an academic you have to publish papers in international referreed journals, and to attract the best students, universities have to compete, not on teaching quality, but on how they grade at producing papers - research excellence.

    It is tough on those of us who came into teaching to teach - but its the way the world goes round at the moment. The highest qualified academics are taken up with publishing papers. A rather unsatisfactory mix of those genuinely dedicated to teaching (at the expence of being paid less and foregoing promotion, as pedagogic professorships are few) and those that aren't good at producing papers (and therefore might not be any good at teaching either) do the teaching. And too much of the current, innovative academic resource in universities doesn't teach undergraduates - so what are students paying for these days going to the more expensive Russell Group universities?

    The other downside of producing papers is that it often means producing papers purely for the sake of producing papers. Where autism is concerned, the benefits of the research take second place (or worse). The choice of papers is about getting the highest research excellence accolade. 

    I'd like NAS to encourage meaningful, useful research on autism. "Back to the future" didn't impress me as useful to people with ASD. It might be helping Durham University sustain its research excellence rating.....

  • I read that Longman, and I disagreed with it too.

  • Oh I forgot to say that each sense is part of a memory too.  We know how certain smells and sensations bring back memories we'd forgotten about.  If someone has processing difficulties in a different sense it will potentially mean memories don't "come back" as easily or aren't as enriched with triggers as people without those issues.

  • I disagree that problems with memory are not "difficulties piecing together information".  To remember, you need to firstly have the processing ability to hold information in short term memory then have the processing ability to sotre it in long term, and then have the processing ability to recall it.  Problems with recalling don't necessarily mean it hasn't been stored and doesn't necessarily mean it's a recall issue, it could be a problem with any stage, including having the ability to verbalise the information that could have been perfectly processed, stored and recalled.  Don't know if I'm making sense so will leave it there and mull it over xx