Online Action Monitoring and Memory for Self-Performed Actions in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

This study explored whether individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience difficulties with action monitoring. Two experimental tasks examined whether adults with ASD are able to monitor their own actions online, and whether they also show a typical enactment effects in memory (enhanced memory for actions they have performed compared to actions they have observed being performed). Individuals with ASD and comparison participants showed a similar pattern of performance on both tasks. In a task which required individuals to distinguish person-caused from computer-caused changes in phenomenology both groups found it easier to monitor their own actions compared to those of an experimenter. Both groups also showed typical enactment effects. Despite recent suggestions to the contrary, these results support suggestions that action monitoring is unimpaired in ASD.