City Research Online

Abstract

Evidence regarding the use of inner speech by individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is equivocal. To clarify this issue, the current study employed multiple techniques and tasks used across several previous studies. In Experiment 1, participants with and without ASD showed highly similar patterns and levels of serial recall for visually-presented stimuli. Both groups were significantly affected by the phonological similarity of items to be recalled, indicating that visual material was spontaneously recoded into a verbal form. Confirming that short-term memory is typically verbally mediated among the majority of people with ASD, recall performance among both groups declined substantially when inner speech use was prevented by the imposition of articulatory suppression during the presentation of stimuli. In Experiment 2, planning performance on a Tower of London task was substantially detrimentally affected by articulatory suppression among comparison participants, but not among participants with ASD. This suggests that planning is not verbally mediated in ASD. Importantly, the extent to which articulatory suppression affected planning among participants with ASD was uniquely associated with the degree of their observed and selfreported communication impairments. This confirms a link between interpersonal communication with others and intrapersonal communication with self as a means of higherorder problem-solving.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012
Publisher Keywords:	Autism spectrum disorder, inner speech, verbal mediation, short-term memory, executive functioning
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Departments:	School of Health & Psychological Sciences > Psychology
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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