The Wiley Handbook of Memory, Autism Spectrum Disorder, and the Law

Jonni L. Johnson, Gail S. Goodman, Peter C. Mundy, Jonni L. Johnson, Gail S. Goodman, Peter C. Mundy

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781119158363, 9781119158264
• eBook ISBN: 9781119158370
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

An Important Contribution to Understanding Autobiographical and Eyewitness Memory in Those with ASD and the Unique Legal Challenges They Present

 This book offers an in-depth discussion of how autobiographical and eyewitness memory operate in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and provides unique insights into current challenges faced by legal professionals, forensic psychologists, clinicians, and others who extend services to those with ASD. Throughout the book, authors demonstrate why a nuanced understanding of autobiographical and eyewitness memory is required when assessing individuals with ASD, given the developmental, social, and cognitive deficits at play. Authors review current legal services and structures, and explore ideas on whether and how modifications can be made to meet the needs of all individuals who seek and deserve justice, including individuals with ASD.

The Wiley Handbook of Memory, Autism Spectrum Disorder, and the Law is sure to spark debate within the mental health and legal communities, while advancing knowledge on the role of key clinical features of ASD in autobiographical and eyewitness memory. The book is distinct in its exploration of ways in which the legal system, with its formal yet inherently social infrastructure and regulated due process demands, should offer services to those with ASD. Of note,  authors question if current policies and practices, such as reliance on interviewing protocols standardized for typically developing individuals, are adequate. The book is divided into three sections with the first providing a discussion of theoretical viewpoints on how memory functions in those with and without ASD, and providing a specialized consideration of developmental issues. A second section reviews empirical evidence, followed by a third and final section addressing legal and clinical considerations, including techniques for interviewing individuals with ASD.

• The first book offering an expert, science-based review of autobiographical and eyewitness memory research on those with ASD and the associated legal challenges
• Provides thought-provoking, informative, often debated observations on memory in ASD from an international team of experts
• Offers summaries of what is known about memory abilities in those with ASD as well as what is left unknown that future researchers will need to address and that legal professionals should consider.

A book that does much to advance the research frontier in the study of memory in ASD and application to the legal system, The Wiley Handbook of Memory, Autism Spectrum Disorder, and the Law is important reading for academic researchers, clinicians, judges, jurors, law enforcement officials, and public policy makers alike.

Part I
Autobiographical Memory Theories and Autism Spectrum Disorder

1
A Relational Processing Framework of Memory in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Sebastian B. Gaigg and Dermot M. Bowler

Ever since the seminal studies of Beate Hermelin and Neil O’Connor during the 1960s and 1970s, it has been known that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), compared to typically developing individuals, learn and remember things differently. They tend not to benefit from meaningful relations among stimuli to facilitate memory (e.g., Tager‐Flusberg, 1991), their memory is often void of contextual details that situates past events in a particular place and time in personal history (e.g., Lind & Bowler, 2010a), and they often find it difficult to spontaneously recall information without aids for retrieval (Bowler, Gardiner, & Berthollier, 2004). At the same time, many individuals with ASD can also demonstrate exceptional memory skills. Autistic savants such as Stephen Wiltshire, for example, draw cityscapes in intricate detail following just a few minutes of exposure (Treffert, 1988, 2009)¹ and although such eidetic memory is rare, it is not uncommon for individuals with ASD to demonstrate superior rote memory skills (Hermelin & O’Connor, 1970)² or to remember details of events that would escape almost everyone else (e.g., Grandin, 2006). This pattern of strengths and difficulties is neither a unique nor a necessary feature of ASD, but interest in this topic is growing because of the functional consequences that memory difficulties can have for an individual. This is, perhaps, nowhere as evident as in the context of the criminal justice system.

Whether it is as a victim, witness, or even a suspected perpetrator of crime, individuals who come into contact with the criminal justice system will often be required to provide accurate accounts of past events that should be rich in relevant detail and provide a coherent narrative of the unfolding of events over time (i.e., who did what to whom, where, and when). Recent evidence is beginning to shed light on how individuals with ASD cope with such demands and how their particular profile of memory strengths and weaknesses impacts their ability to give evidence. To provide a broader context for this emerging literature, the present chapter provides an overview of the memory profile in ASD from the perspective of the distinctions between relational and item‐specific memory processes on the one hand, and between recollection and familiarity on the other. After a brief introduction to these distinctions, three lines of evidence are summarized, which suggest that relational memory and recollection are compromised in ASD whereas item‐specific memory and familiarity are relatively preserved. A final section then considers what the implications of this pattern are for how individuals with ASD should be supported in the context of the criminal justice system. It is important to note, however, that the evidence summarized in this chapter primarily concerns individuals with ASD who do not have significant intellectual and/or language impairments.

Distinctions in memory

It is now well established that our ability to remember the past is the result of a number of interacting processes that govern how memories are initially formed, how securely they are retained, and how likely it is that they can be retrieved at a later stage. A detailed overview of the various distinctions that have been drawn in this context is beyond the scope of this chapter (see Neath & Suprenant, 2003, for comprehensive overviews). Instead, we focus on two related distinctions that have proven useful for understanding the memory profile associated with ASD: between relational and item‐specific processing on the one hand, and recollection versus familiarity on the other.

The distinction between relational and item‐specific processing was first formalized in a pair of publications by Einstein and Hunt (1980) and Hunt and Einstein (1981) to integrate two influential perspectives of the time about which information people needed to process effectively in order to ensure successful memory. One view held that memory crucially depended on the processing of commonalities between to‐be‐remembered elements or events, which could serve to organize material around a common theme that would subsequently aid retrieval (Tulving, 1966; Tulving & Patkau, 1962). Evidence for the operation of such organizational processes stemmed from the observation that participants generally remembered sets of interrelated items better than unrelated items (Cofer, 1965; Hyde & Jenkins, 1969) and that this memory advantage was predicted by the extent to which participants spontaneously organize to‐be‐remembered stimuli into clusters of categorically (e.g., fruit) or associatively (e.g., table‐chair) related items during retrieval (Tulving, 1962, 1966). There was also evidence for a rather different view, however, which emphasized the processing of the unique details of to‐be‐remembered stimuli as important for successful memory. Specifically, it was well established that memory is better when stimuli are processed for their meaning instead of their perceptual properties (e.g., Tresselt & Mayzner, 1960). According to the Levels of Processing (LoP; Craik & Lockhart, 1972) account, this is because meaning is represented at a deeper level of an information processing hierarchy than more superficial perceptual information, and deeper levels of processing render memory traces more elaborate and distinct, and thus, more readily accessible for retrieval.

Organizational and LoP accounts of memory seemed antithetical because they each emphasized the processing of relational versus item‐specific information as important for successful memory. However, Einstein and Hunt (1980) argued that both processes could be operating in parallel and contribute independently to successful memory. They argued that the extent to which people spontaneously process either type of information depends on the nature of the to‐be‐remembered material. Highly interrelated stimuli, such as categorically related words or objects that are commonly found together in a particular room, would naturally encourage relational processing, whereas stimuli that are more distinctive (e.g., a knife in a bathroom rather than a kitchen) would encourage item‐specific processing. Einstein and Hunt (1980) reasoned that if both types of information contribute independently to successful memory, encouraging relational processing should be most effective for material that would spontaneously give rise to item‐specific processing. Conversely, encouraging item‐specific processing should be most effective for material that would otherwise stimulate relational processing. These predictions were confirmed in a series of experiments in which participants were asked to study lists of related and/or unrelated words under conditions that either drew attention to relational (e.g., sorting words into categories) or item‐specific (e.g., rating words on pleasantness) information (Einstein & Hunt, 1980; Hunt & Einstein, 1981; Hunt & Seta, 1984). In all experiments, words that were obviously related were better remembered following item‐specific processing, whereas less obviously related words were better remembered following relational processing. It is interesting to note that memory was best overall when participants engaged both processes together, confirming that relational and item‐specific information contribute additively to memory success. Another important observation was that study instructions that directed participants’ attention to relational information were most beneficial for facilitating their ability to freely recall material, whereas instructions that directed attention to item‐specific information were most beneficial for their ability to discriminate studied from non‐studied items in tests of recognition (Einstein & Hunt, 1980) or to retrieve items in response to cues such as category labels (Hunt & Mcdaniel, 1...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Part I: Autobiographical Memory Theories and Autism Spectrum Disorder
• Part II: From Autobiographical Memory to Eyewitness Memory
• Part III: Investigative Tools and Legal Application
• Index
• End User License Agreement