A Meta-Analysis and Critical Review of Prospective Memory in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The included studies were small case-control comparisons, not randomised trials, so they cannot establish that a treatment improves prospective memory. The event-based studies were heterogeneous, and the authors say the small impairment may be unreliable because of methodological problems. Some studies did not match groups for age, verbal or nonverbal ability, or ongoing-task performance, so group differences could reflect those factors instead of ASD. Some studies did not check whether participants remembered the prospective memory instruction, so apparent failures could be retrospective memory problems. Some studies mixed time-based and event-based tasks in the same experiment, making it hard to separate which type of prospective memory was impaired. The paper is a review of existing studies, not a clinical trial, so it cannot support a recommendation that a specific intervention works.

Do not conclude that people with autism spectrum disorder have a general prospective memory deficit. The clear finding is a large time-based impairment; the event-based finding is small, inconsistent, and confounded by study design.