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Abstract
People with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) exhibit subtle deficits in recollection,
which have been proposed to arise from encoding impairments, though a direct link
has yet to be demonstrated. In the current study, we used eye-tracking to obtain trial-specific
measures of encoding (eye movement patterns) during incidental (natural viewing) and
intentional (strategic) encoding conditions in adults with ASD and typical controls.
Using this approach, we tested the degree to which differences in encoding might contribute
to recollection impairments, or whether group differences in memory primarily emerge
at retrieval. Following encoding of scenes, participants were asked to distinguish
between old and similar lure scenes and provide 'remember'/'familiar' responses. Intentional
encoding increased eye movements and subsequent recollection in both groups to a similar
degree, but the ASD group were impaired overall at the memory task and used recollection
less frequently. In controls, eye movements at encoding predicted subsequent correct
responses and subsequent recollection on a trial-by-trial basis, as expected. In contrast,
despite a similar pattern of eye movements during encoding in the two groups, eye
movements did not predict trial-by-trial subsequent memory in ASD. Furthermore, recollection
was associated with lower similarity between encoding- and retrieval-related eye movements
in the ASD group compared to the control group. The eye-tracking results therefore
provide novel evidence for a dissociation between encoding and recollection-based
retrieval in ASD.