Structural Learning in Autistic and Non-Autistic Children: A Replication and Extension.
The hippocampus is involved in many cognitive domains which are difficult for autistic individuals. Our previous study using a Structural Learning task that has been shown to depend on hippocampal functioning found that structural learning is diminished in autistic adults (Ring et al., 2017). The ai...
| Published in: | Journal of Autism & Developmental Disorders Vol. 56; no. 1; pp. 229 - 241 |
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , |
| Format: | research tables/charts Journal Article |
| Published: |
Springer Nature
Jan2026
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=191290284&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ccm uiTerm: 191290284 longDbName: CINAHL Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: dissinfo: jinfo: jid: 01623257 AUT jtl: Journal of Autism & Developmental Disorders issn: 01623257 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Jan2026 vid: 56 iid: 1 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature place: New York, New York artinfo: ui: 191290284 179595768 191290284 191290284 10.1007/s10803-024-06486-0 191290284 ppf: 229 ppct: 12 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P tig: atl: Structural Learning in Autistic and Non-Autistic Children: A Replication and Extension. aug: au: Oestreicher, Svenja Bowler, Dermot M. Derwent, Claire T. Gaigg, Sebastian B. Roessner, Veit Vetter, Nora Volk, Theresia Beyer, Nicole Ring, Melanie affil: https://ror.org/04za5zm41 Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Medical Faculty, University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus, Technische Universität Dresden, Fetscherstraße 74, 01307, Dresden, Germany sug: subj: Autism Spectrum Disorder Hippocampus Physiopathology Learning Evaluation Human Child Adolescence Replication Studies Task Performance and Analysis Discrimination Executive Function Descriptive Statistics Data Analysis Software T-Tests Chi Square Test Fisher's Exact Test Bivariate Statistics Mann-Whitney U Test Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance Regression Learning Disorders Child: 6-12 years Adolescent: 13-18 years ab: The hippocampus is involved in many cognitive domains which are difficult for autistic individuals. Our previous study using a Structural Learning task that has been shown to depend on hippocampal functioning found that structural learning is diminished in autistic adults (Ring et al., 2017). The aim of the present study was to examine whether those results can be replicated in and extended to a sample of autistic and non-autistic children. We tested 43 autistic children and 38 non-autistic children with a subsample of 25 autistic and 28 non-autistic children who were well-matched on IQ. The children took part in a Simple Discrimination task which a simpler form of compound learning, and a Structural Learning task. We expected both groups to perform similarly in Simple Discrimination but reduced performance by the autism group on the Structural Learning task, which is what we found in both the well-matched and the non-matched sample. However, contrary to our prediction and the findings from autistic adults in our previous study, autistic children demonstrated a capacity for Structural Learning and showed an overall better performance in the tasks than was seen in earlier studies. We discuss developmental differences in autism as well as the role of executive functions that may have contributed to better than predicted task performance in this study. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: research tables/charts Journal Article ougenre: Article language: English refInfo: holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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