Remembering the future; prospective memory across the autistic adult's life span.
Autism
; 28(9): 2254-2266, 2024 Sep.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38240223
ABSTRACT
LAY ABSTRACT What is already known Prospective memory is an important function for daily living. It is the cognitive function that helps you remember that you are meeting your friend for coffee at 2 pm tomorrow, or that you need to take your vitamins after breakfast. This cognitive function is particularly important in autistic adults, but how prospective memory is associated with increasing age, we currently do not know.What this paper adds Although performance on experimental tasks that measure prospective memory decreases with age, this pattern is similar in autistic and non-autistic adults. No age effects were found for tasks that were performed outside the lab. Autistic adults and non-autistic adults perform similarly on prospective memory, and this performance remains similar when autistic and non-autistic adults age.Implications for practice, research, or policy While our results show that prospective memory decreased with increasing age, our results do point to parallel development of prospective memory in autistic and non-autistic adults. This finding serves as a reassurance for those individuals concerned that older autistic individuals might show quicker cognitive decline.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Autistic Disorder
/
Memory, Episodic
Type of study:
Risk_factors_studies
Limits:
Adolescent
/
Adult
/
Aged
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
/
Middle aged
Language:
En
Journal:
Autism
Journal subject:
PSICOLOGIA
/
PSIQUIATRIA
Year:
2024
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Netherlands
Country of publication:
United kingdom