Metacognitive Monitoring and Control of Eyewitness Memory Reports in Autism.
Katie Maras, Jade Eloise Norris, Neil Brewer
PMID 32052919WHAT IT FOUND
Autistic adults and non-autistic adults gave similarly detailed and accurate eyewitness reports on this structured task.
Accuracy instructions helped both. Social questioning improved accuracy, but autistic adults were less able to choose what to report.
Key findings
01Autistic and non-autistic adults did not differ in how much detail they volunteered or in overall accuracy, and both shifted to broader, less specific answers when told to prioritize accuracy.
02Questions delivered face-to-face improved accuracy for both groups, but autistic adults were less able to choose what to report than non-autistic adults only in the face-to-face condition.
03When forced to give detailed answers, accuracy at high confidence dropped to around 70% at 100% confidence and around 45% at 90% confidence for both groups.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The task used a short mock bank robbery video and structured cued questions, so it may not show how autistic adults report a real event in a free narrative. The sample was 63 adults, so it may not apply to children or people with lower cognitive ability. Sex was not matched: the autistic group included 16 males and 14 females, while the non-autistic group included 7 males and 26 females. Autistic diagnosis was based on clinical reports, and ADOS-2 scores were available for only nine participants; six participants completed ADOS-2 because they could not access their report. Null group differences may miss small effects, though the reported group effect sizes were very small. The accuracy instruction in the final phase came after a forced-report phase, so it is unclear whether the instruction alone caused the improvement.
Declared interests
No conflict-of-interest declaration is present in the supplied text. The article metadata lists non-U.S. government research support.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the lack of group differences as proof that autistic adults are equally reliable eyewitnesses in all real interviews. This was a structured cued-recall task with a short mock video, and autistic adults showed poorer reporting control when questions were delivered socially.