Poster #5 - Developmental Trends in the Characteristics of Testimony Provided by Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Intellectual Disabilities: A Systematic Review

• In Event: Poster Session 03

Abstract

Observed social communication differences among individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Intellectual Disabilities (ID) may impact the accuracy, coherency, and amount of information recounted about past experiences among ASD and ID individuals compared with typically developing (TD) peers. Episodic memory skills have implications for forensic investigations and psychological adjustment after being victimized or witnessing crimes. Given children with ASD or ID are 2-3 times more likely to be crime victims or witnesses compared with TD peers (McDonnell et al., 2018), it is critical to understand whether children with ASD and ID differ in key testimony characteristics (accuracy, amount, and coherence) compared with TD peers and whether differences depend on chronological age.
This pre-registered systematic review (https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/YT2NU) examines testimony characteristics provided by ASD and ID participants. Previous narrative reviews examining characteristics of episodic and autobiographical memory in ASD and ID found accuracy, amount, and coherence of testimony differs in ASD participants compared with TD peers. Individuals with ASD provide less information and are less coherent, but similarly accurate, as TD peers (Maras & Bowler, 2014; McDonnell et al., 2017). ID participants have been found to provide less accurate and detailed accounts than TD peers (Bowles & Sharman, 2014). Based on this research, it is predicted individuals with ASD and ID will recount less and ASD individuals will have significantly less coherent recalls than ID individuals, who will have significantly less coherent recalls that TD peers. ASD is not anticipated to impact accuracy compared with TD peers during childhood and adolescence, but ID is expected to impair accuracy across the lifespan. From a Fuzzy Trace Theory perspective and because children with ASD are less susceptible to gist-based processing errors than TD peers (Miller et al., 2018), ASD is expected to have little impact on the accuracy of recall during childhood and adolescence compared to TD peers. During adulthood, however, ASD is anticipated to decrease accuracy due to age-based declines in verbatim trace abilities mitigating early benefits of gist-based error reductions. Detail amount and narrative coherence are expected to improve from childhood to adulthood across all groups.
Systematic review goals were: (1) identify literature examining amount, accuracy, and coherence of narratives in ASD and ID across the lifespan and (2) examine developmental differences during early childhood, adolescence and adulthood in amount, accuracy, and coherence of narratives in ASD and ID compared with TD peers (as an exploratory analysis).
PsychInfo, ERIC and PubMed were searched from 7/20 – 8/1/2022, for articles meeting the following criteria: (1) Peer-reviewed English publications; (2) Includes empirical data examining memory report amount, coherency, or accuracy; (3) Diagnostic group presence (ASD and/or ID). Keywords included: (“Intellectual disabilities” OR “Mental Retardation” OR Autism OR Asperger’s OR “Pervasive Developmental Disorder”] AND [(Autobiographical memory) OR (Episodic memory) OR (Suggestibility) OR (Eyewitness Memory) OR (Testimony) OR (Forensic Interviews)]. This search yielded 1,111 articles. Following PRISMA, deduplication excluded 313 articles; 737 were excluded during title/abstract screening; 61 are currently undergoing full text screening. The systematic review and data processing will be completed by February, 2023.

Authors

• Tori Dickensheets, University of Texas at San Antonio
  Presenting Author

• Katie Gorelik

• Monica Lawson, University of Texas at San Antonio