title: Metamemory in children with autism: exploring "feeling-of-knowing" in episodic and semantic memory.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder primarily affecting social function and communication. Recently, there has been an interest in whether people with ASD also show memory deficits. Studies in ASD have revealed subtle impairments on tasks requiring participants to learn new information (episodic memory), but intact performance on general knowledge tasks (semantic memory). The novelty of this study was to explore metamemory (i.e., awareness of memory performance) and to examine whether children with ASD suffer from a generalized metamemory deficit common to all forms of memory, or would only present deficits on episodic metamemory tasks.
  
  
  METHODS
  To assess metamemory functioning we administered 2 feeling-of-knowing (FOK) tasks, 1 for episodic and 1 for semantic materials. In these tasks, participants are asked to predict the likelihood of subsequently recognizing currently unrecalled information.
  
  
  RESULTS
  It was found that children with autism made inaccurate FOK predictions, but only for episodic materials.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  A specific deficit in meta-cognition emerges for only one set of materials. We argue that this deficit can be conceived of as reflecting a deficit in recollection, stemming from an inability to cast the self in the past and retrieve information about the study episode.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychological Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Dominika Z
authors.initials: DZ
authors.lastname: Wojcik
authors.forename: Chris J A
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Moulin
authors.forename: Celine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Souchay
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000150:complications*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D003463:Cues; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000209:etiology* / Q000523:psychology*; D061212:Memory, Episodic; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012660:Semantics; D014706:Verbal Learning / Q000502:physiology