1 Introduction World Health Organisation, 1992 American Psychiatric Association, 2000 Boucher & Lewis, 1989 Bowler, Gardiner, & Grice, 2000a Bowler, Matthews, & Gardiner, 1997 Gardiner, Bowler, & Grice, 2003 Minshew, Goldstein, Muenz, & Payton, 1992 Minshew, Goldstein, Taylor, & Siegel, 1994 Tager-Flusberg, 1991 Bowler, Gardiner, Grice, & Saavalainen, 2000b Hermelin & O’Connor, 1967 Smith, Gardiner, & Bowler, 2007 Tager-Flusberg, 1991 López & Leekam, 2003 Craik & Anderson, 1999 Craik, Morris, Morris, & Loewen, 1990 Bowler et al. (1997) Bowler, Gardiner, and Berthollier (2004) Bennetto, Pennington, & Rogers, 1996 Farrant, Blades, & Boucher, 1998 Hermelin and O’Connor (1970) Hermelin and O’Connor (1970) Bowler et al., 2000b; Tager-Flusberg, 1991 per se Roediger and McDermott's (1995) bed dream night sleep Bowler et al. (2000b) Beversdorf, Smith, Crucian, Anderson, and Keillor (2000) Bowler et al., 1997; Gardiner et al., 2003 Mottron, Morasse, & Belleville, 2001 Toichi & Kamio, 2002 Craik & Lockhart, 1972 Toichi & Kamio, 2002 Mottron et al. (2001) Bowler, Gaigg, & Gardiner, 2008b Roediger, Watson, McDermott, & Gallo, 2001 Anderson & Bower, 1972 relational item-specific Anderson & Bower, 1972 Hunt & McDaniel, 1993 Bowler et al., 2000a Bowler, Gardiner, & Gaigg, 2007 Gardiner, 2001 relation Gardiner, 2001; Tulving, 1985, 2002 Minshew & Goldstein, 2001 Bowler, Gaigg, & Gardiner, 2008a Hunt and Seta (1984) per se Hunt and Seta (1984) per se Hunt and Seta (1984) Hunt and Seta (1984) Bousfield, 1953 Bower, Clark, Lesgold, & Winzenz, 1969 Mottron et al., 2001 2 Method 2.1 Participants UK The Psychological Corporation, 2002 Table 1 American Psychiatric Association, 2000 All but four individuals with ASD (two from each orienting task condition), who had been prescribed low doses of antidepressant medication, were free of psychotropic medication. Since the exclusion of these participants and their matched typical individuals did not alter the results significantly, all participants were included in the analysis. 2.2 Design and materials Hunt and Seta's (1984) Battig and Montague (1969) Battig & Montague, 1969 2.3 Procedure Hunt and Seta (1984) Hunt and Seta (1984) 3 Results F p r Miller & Chapman, 2001 3.1 Baseline condition Fig. 1 F p F p t p d t d F p F p F p z p F p F p Table 2 F p F F F 3.2 Orienting tasks Prior to analysing the recall performance following the orienting tasks, we assessed whether groups may have completed these tasks differently. During the category sorting task, participants in both groups performed at ceiling with only 3 ASD and 2 Comparison individuals committing either 1 or 2 errors. During the rating condition, ASD participants provided average ratings of 3.04 (S.D. = 0.41), which did not differ significantly from the average rating of 2.88 (S.D. = 0.27) given by the Comparison group. Similarly, an inspection of the frequency distributions of the ratings given by individuals revealed no differences between the groups. Taken together with the observation that groups did not differ significantly in terms of the time they spent looking through the deck of cards whilst they completed the orienting tasks these findings suggest no group differences in fulfilling the requirements of the orienting task instructions. Fig. 2 F p F p Hunt and Seta (1984) t p t p F F F F d Figs. 1 and 2 Table 3 F p F p F p F F p F p F p F F Hunt and Seta (1984) 4 Discussion Hunt and Seta (1984) Bowler et al., 1997; Smith et al., 2007; Tager-Flusberg, 1991 Solely on the basis of the results from the baseline condition it is difficult to determine the severity of the relational memory difficulty evident in individuals with ASD. Our results from the supported encoding conditions shed some light on this issue. These results revealed that following item-specific and relational orienting tasks, overall recall performance between ASD and comparison participants were comparable. As noted in our results, we concede that this conclusion may be criticised on the basis of the reduced group sizes for each of the orienting task conditions, particularly because the ASD group's performance was numerically (if not significantly) worse than the typical group following the relational orienting task. What is crucial to note, however, is that unlike performance during the baseline condition the patterning of recall as a function of category size following the orienting tasks was very similar for the two groups as were the indices of relational and item-specific encoding. In other words, individuals with ASD no longer exhibited the disproportional difficulties with relational memory processes that characterised their performance during the baseline condition. In this context it is particularly noteworthy that the overall level of recall and the pattern of recall across category sizes of individuals with ASD following the relational orienting condition were almost identical to that of typical individuals during the baseline condition. Conversely, the comparison groups’ performance following the item-specific orienting task was nearly identical to that of the ASD group during the baseline condition. Thus, whilst the relational orienting task allowed individuals with ASD to achieve a level of performance comparable to that of typical individuals’ unsupported performance, the item-specific orienting task seems to have created a learning situation for typical individuals that mimics that experienced by individuals with ASD under normal circumstances. Bowler et al., 1997 lacking spontaneously Mottron, 2004 Mottron, Dawson, Soulières, Hubert, & Burack, 2006 Kemper & Bauman, 1998 Nicolson et al., 2006 Eichenbaum, 2004 spontaneous spontaneous