Memory in Autism
In collaboration with Professor John Gardiner of the University of Sussex, and with the financial support of the Wellcome Trust, I am carrying out studies of conscious recollective experience in individuals from the higher-functioning end of the autism spectrum (often described as having Asperger’s syndrome). We were the first researchers to establish that such individuals have a small but significant deficit in the kind of awareness typically experienced when events such as the last time we went to the cinema are recalled. This self-conscious (or autonoetic) awareness contrasts with the noetic awareness we experience when remembering facts such as the boiling temperature of water. Impaired autonoetic awareness has been linked to impaired understanding of mental states, which is a characteristic of autism..