Spatial navigation, episodic memory, episodic future thinking, and theory of mind in children with autism spectrum disorder: evidence for impairments in mental simulation?

ABSTRACT: This study explored spatial navigation alongside several other cognitive abilities that are thought to share common underlying neurocognitive mechanisms (e.g., the capacity for self-projection, scene construction, or mental simulation), and which we hypothesized may be impaired in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Twenty intellectually high-functioning children with ASD (with a mean age of ~8 years) were compared to 20 sex, age, IQ, and language ability matched typically developing children on a series of tasks to assess spatial navigation, episodic memory, episodic future thinking (also known as episodic foresight or prospection), theory of mind (ToM), relational memory, and central coherence. This is the first study to explore these abilities concurrently within the same sample. Spatial na

SUBMITTER: Lind SE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4256988 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature