
Dermot M BowlerCity St George's, University of London · Psychology
Dermot M Bowler
PhD
About
179
Publications
48,548
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
6,276
Citations
Introduction
Additional affiliations
April 1990 - present
Education
October 1977 - December 1985
University of London Institute of Education
Field of study
- Psychology
October 1976 - October 1977
University of London Institute of Education
Field of study
- Child Development
October 1972 - June 1976
Publications
Publications (179)
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 thos...
Background
Autistic individuals encounter numerous barriers in accessing healthcare, including communication difficulties, sensory sensitivities, and a lack of appropriate adjustments. These issues are particularly acute during MRI scans, which involve confined spaces, loud noises, and the necessity to remain still. There remains no unified approac...
A central question in understanding cognition and pathology-related cognitive changes is how we process time.
However, time processing difficulties across several neurological and psychiatric conditions remain seldom
investigated. The aim of this review is to develop a unifying taxonomy of time processing, and a neuropsychological perspective on te...
Background:
Forty five percent of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) show no additional language or intellectual disabilities and attend mainstream schools, yet their long-term outcomes are poor (Baird et al., 2006). Poorer quality of life in older autistic adults (Roestorf, 2018) has been associated with difficulties with theory of mind...
Background:
Training parents to engage in elaborative reminiscing (ER) with their typically developing children has been found to significantly improve outcomes for typically developing children. Studies have reported significant benefits of ER for improving children’s memory (Waters et al., 2019, Wu & Jobson, 2019) and associations between ER and...
Encoding of visual scenes remains under-explored due to methodological limitations. In this study, we evaluated the relationship between memory accuracy for visual scenes and eye movements at encoding. First, we used data-driven methods, a fixation density map (using iMap4) and a saliency map (using GBVS), to analyse the visual attention for items....
The long-described atypicalities of memory functioning experienced by people with autism have major implications for daily living, academic learning, as well as cognitive remediation. Though behavioral studies have identified a robust profile of memory strengths and weaknesses in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), few works have attempted to establish...
Background:
Autistic individuals might undergo a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) examination for clinical concerns or research. Increased sensory stimulation, lack of appropriate environmental adjustments, or lack of streamlined communication in the MRI suite may pose challenges to autistic patients and render MRI scans inaccessible. This study a...
In a recent study on visual episodic memory (Desaunay, Clochon, et al., 2020), we have shown event‐related potentials (ERPs) differences associated with priming (150–300 msec), familiarity (350–470 msec), and recollection (600–700 msec), in young people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) compared with typical development (TD). To go further into...
A central question in understanding cognition and pathology-related cognitive changes is how we process time. However, time processing impairments across several neurological and psychiatric disorders remains seldom investigated, with no unified understanding. In this review, an international group of experts from different backgrounds (cognitive p...
Background
Poor mental health is known to adversely affect functional abilities, social isolation, and quality of life (QoL). It is, therefore, crucial to consider the long-term impacts of mental health conditions as autistic adults grow older.
Objectives
To explore, in a group of community-based autistic adults, the extent of: (i) autistic traits...
Previous research has indicated that autistic adults experience higher rates of co‐occurring mental health difficulties and poorer quality of life (QoL) than their non‐autistic peers. Little is known, however, about these aspects in older age or whether younger and older autistic adults experience similar patterns This cross‐sectional study investi...
Recently, we have shown that pupil dilation during a recognition memory task can serve as an index of memory retrieval difficulties in autism. At the time of publication, we were unaware of specific data‐analysis methods that can be used to shed further light on the origins of such memory related pupil dilation. Specifically, by distinguishing “ton...
Background: Poor mental health is known to adversely affect functional abilities, social isolation and quality of life (QoL). It is, therefore, crucial to consider the long-term impacts of mental health conditions as autistic adults grow older. Objectives: To explore, in a group of community-based autistic adults, the extent of: (i) autistic traits...
Background: Poor mental health is known to adversely affect functional abilities, social isolation and quality of life (QoL). It is, therefore, crucial to consider the long-term impacts of mental health conditions as autistic adults grow older. Objectives: To explore the extent of: (i) autistic traits, co-occurring physical and mental health condit...
Background: Poor mental health is known to adversely affect functional abilities, social isolation and quality of life (QoL). It is, therefore, crucial to consider the long-term impacts of mental health conditions as autistic adults grow older. Objectives: Our objectives were to understand the extent of: (i) autistic traits, co-occurring physical a...
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by atypical perception, including processing that is biased toward local details rather than global configurations. This bias may impact on memory. The present study examined the effect of this perception on both implicit (Experiment 1) and explicit (Experiment 2) memory in conditions that promote eit...
The Intra‐Extra‐dimensional set shift task (IEDS) is a widely used test of learning and attention, believed to be sensitive to aspects of executive function. The task proceeds through a number of stages, and it is generally claimed that patterns of errors across stages can be used to discriminate between reduced attention switching and more general...
This study tested whether adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show the same pattern of difficulties and absence of age‐related differences in short‐term memory (STM) as those that have been reported in episodic long‐term memory (LTM). Fifty‐three adults with ASD (age range: 25–65 years) were compared to 52 age‐, biological sex‐, and intellig...
Behavioral data on episodic recollection in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) point limited relational memory functioning. However, the involvement of successive memory processes in the profile of episodic memory in ASD needs more study. Here, we used event‐related potentials (ERP) to investigate the time course of episodic recollection with an assoc...
In the domain of memory, autism is characterized by difficulties in explicitly remembering the specific order of stimuli, whereas implicit serial order memory appears to be preserved. This pattern is of considerable interest because serial order memory is known to play a critical role in children's language development. Currently, however, few para...
Lay abstract:
Anxiety in autism is an important target for psychological therapies because it is very common and because it significantly impacts upon quality of life and well-being. Growing evidence suggests that cognitive behaviour therapies and mindfulness-based therapies can help autistic individuals learn to manage feelings of anxiety but acc...
Two experiments tested the hypothesis that a plausible contributory factor of structural language impairment in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is impaired declarative memory. We hypothesized that familiarity and recollection (subserving semantic and episodic memory, respectively) are both impaired in autistic individuals with clinically significant...
To address inconsistencies in the literature on memory in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), we report the first ever meta-analysis of short-term memory (STM) and episodic long-term memory (LTM) in ASD, evaluating the effects of type of material, type of retrieval and the role of interitem relations. Analysis of 64 studies comparing individuals with A...
Authors: Dermot M Bowler, Amanda Roestorf, Sarah Sherwood
Our work as autism researchers often explores ways of understanding the differences in how autistic and non-autistic people process information, for learning and rememembering in everyday life. Because of these differences, some everyday activities - which non-autistic people can sometimes...
This study investigated the pupil Old/New effect in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and typical development (TD). Participants studied verbal and visual meaningful and meaningless materials in black and white on a computer screen. Pupil sizes were measured while participants performed a Remember (episodic memory with context)/Know (...
To address inconsistencies in the literature on memory in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), we report the first ever meta-analysis of short-term (STM) and episodic long-term (LTM) memory in ASD,
evaluating the effects of type of material, type of retrieval and the role of inter-item relations. Analysis of 64 studies comparing individuals with ASD and...
A special interest group (SIG) entitled "Older Adults with ASD: The Consequences of Aging" was held at the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR) annual meetings in 2016 and 2017. The SIG and subsequent meetings brought together, for the first time, international delegates who were members of the autistic community, researchers, practiti...
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) present difficulties in forming relations among items and context. This capacity for relational binding is also involved in spatial navigation and research on this topic in ASD is scarce and inconclusive. Using a computerised version of the Morris Water Maze task, ASD participants showed particular di...
Lay summary:
Navigating an environment is difficult for people with ASD independent of whether they are travelling in the same or in a different direction from that which they originally studied. The present study suggests that flexibility in alternating travel directions, difficulties in remembering landmarks as well as reduced attention to landm...
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is generally associated with difficulties in contextual source memory but not single item memory. There are surprising inconsistencies in the literature, however, that the current study seeks to address by examining item and source memory in age and ability matched groups of 22 ASD and 21 comparison adults. Results sh...
Persons with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) demonstrate good memory for single items but difficulties remembering contextual information related to these items. Recently, we found compromised explicit but intact implicit retrieval of object-location information in ASD (Ring et al. Autism Res 8(5):609–619, 2015). Eye-movement data collected from a s...
Encoding and retrieval processes in memory for pairs of pictures are thought to be influenced by inter-item similarity and by features of individual items. Using Event-Related Potentials (ERP), we aimed to identify how these processes impact on both the early mid-frontal FN400 and the Late Positive Component (LPC) potentials during associative retr...
Structural learning is fundamental to the formation of cognitive maps that are necessary for learning, memory, and spatial navigation. It also enables successful navigation of the social world, which is something that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) find particularly difficult. To master these situations, a person needs to bind piec...
The Vygotsky Blocks Test assesses problem-solving styles within a theoretical framework for the development of higher mental processes devised by Vygotsky. Because both the theory and the associated test situate cognitive development within the child’s social and linguistic context, they address conceptual issues around the developmental relation b...
In order to clarify the role of item and order memory in the serial recall of aduts with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), we carried out two experiments in which adults with ASD and comparison participants matched on chronological age and verbal IQ saw sequences of seven dots appear sequentially in a 3 x 4 grid. In Experiment 1 (serial recall), they...
Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) tend to show distinctive, atypical acoustic patterns of speech. These behaviors affect social interactions and social development and could represent a non-invasive marker for ASD. We systematically reviewed the literature quantifying acoustic patterns in ASD. Search terms were: (prosody OR intonation...
Lay Abstract
Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are reported to speak in distinctive ways. Distinctive vocal production should be better understood as it can affect social interactions and social development and could represent a noninvasive marker for ASD. We systematically review the existing scientific literature reporting quantitat...
Purpose:
To explore early findings that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have reduced scotopic ERG b-wave amplitudes.
Methods:
Light-adapted (LA) and dark-adapted (DA) ERGs were produced by a range of flash strengths that included and extended the ISCEV standard from two subject groups: a high-functioning ASD group N = 11 and a Co...
Research into memory in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) suggests intact item memory but difficulties in forming relations between items (Bowler, Gaigg, & Lind, 2011). In this study, we tested memory for items as well as for sequential, spatial, and associative relations between items with the same paradigm using abstract shapes in ASD and typically...
This study tested implicit and explicit spatial relational memory in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Participants were asked to study pictures of rooms and pictures of daily objects for which locations were highlighted in the rooms. Participants were later tested for their memory of the object locations either by being asked to place objects back i...
Adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show intact recognition (supported procedure) but impaired recall (unsupported procedure) of incidentally-encoded context. Because this has not been demonstrated for temporal source, we compared the temporal and spatial source memory of adults with ASD and verbally matched typical adults. Because of diffic...
Memory functioning in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by impairments in the encoding of relational but not item information and difficulties in the recollection of contextually rich episodic memories but not in the retrieval of relatively context-free memories through processes of familiarity. The neural underpinnings of this profil...
This study explored spatial navigation alongside several other cognitive abilities that are thought to share common underlying neurocognitive mechanisms (e.g., the capacity for self-projection, scene construction, or mental simulation), and which we hypothesized may be impaired in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Twenty intellectually high-functioni...
Navigational impairments have previously been reported in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The present study examined the ability of individuals with ASD to generate and scan their mental image of a previously viewed map. Twenty-one ASD adults and 20 age- and IQ-matched comparison adults memorised a map of a fictitious island containing a number of...
The widely used evidence-based police interviewing technique, the Cognitive Interview, is not effective for witnesses with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The present study examined whether a modification of the Cognitive Interview that removes the social element, the Self-Administered Interview©, is more useful in facilitating recall by ASD witnes...
Background: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is frequently associated with Alexithymia, which is characterised by difficulties in identifying and describing one’s own emotions (Hill et al., 2004). These difficulties have been shown to account for the problems individuals with ASD often experience in recognising and identifying emotional expressions i...
Background:
Memory functioning in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) follows a characteristic pattern, including good rote memory (Kanner, 1943) and cued recall (Bowler, Matthews & Gardiner (1997). Impairments have been demonstrated in the free recall of semantically related items (Tager-Flusberg, 1991), and the recognition of combinations of feature...
Rehearsal strategies of adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and demographically matched typically developed (TD) adults were strategically manipulated by cueing participants to either learn, or forget each list word prior to a recognition task. Participants were also asked to distinguish between autonoetic and noetic states of awareness us...
Diminished episodic memory and diminished use of semantic information to aid recall by individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are both thought to result from diminished relational binding of elements of complex stimuli. To test this hypothesis, we asked high-functioning adults with ASD and typical comparison participants to study grids in...
Research suggests that spatial navigation relies on the same neural network as episodic memory, episodic future thinking, and theory of mind (ToM). Such findings have stimulated theories (e.g., the scene construction and self-projection hypotheses) concerning possible common underlying cognitive capacities. Consistent with such theories, autism spe...
Objective:
There appears to be a common network of brain regions that underlie the ability to recall past personal experiences (episodic memory) and the ability to imagine possible future personal experiences (episodic future thinking). At the cognitive level, these abilities are thought to rely on "scene construction" (the ability to bind togethe...
Considerable evidence suggests that the episodic memory system operates abnormally in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) whereas the functions of the semantic memory system are relatively preserved. Here we show that the same dissociation also applies to the domain of order memory. We asked adult participants to order the names of famous historical fig...
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show atypicalities in episodic memory (Boucher et al. in Psychological Bulletin, 138 (3), 458-496, 2012). We asked participants to recall the colours of a set of studied line drawings (episodic judgement), or to recognize line drawings alone (semantic judgement). Cycowicz et al. (Journal of Experiment...
Recognition memory in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) tends to be undiminished compared to that of typically developing (TD) individuals (Bowler et al. 2007), but it is still unknown whether memory in ASD relies on qualitatively similar or different neurophysiology. We sought to explore the neural activity underlying recognition by employing the old...
The aim of the present study was to (a) extend previous eyewitness research in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) using a live and personally experienced event; (b) examine whether witnesses with ASD demonstrate a facilitative effect in memory for self- over other-performed actions; (c) explore source monitoring abilities by witnesses with ASD in discr...
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may be over-represented within the criminal justice system; it is therefore important to understand how they fare under police questioning. The present study examined interrogative suggestibility and compliance in individuals with ASD, and whether this is associated with certain psychological traits....
Purpose
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a condition in which visual perception to both static and moving stimuli is altered. The aim of this study was to investigate the early cortical responses of subjects with ASD to simple patterns and moving radial rings using visual evoked potentials (VEPs).
Methods
Male ASD participants (n = 9) and typicall...
Recent research has revealed that episodic memory (remembering past experiences) and episodic future thinking (imagining future experiences) rely on the same underlying neuro-cognitive system. Consistent with this suggestion, individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been shown to experience difficulties in both domains. In the present s...
The Cognitive Interview is among the most widely accepted forms of police interviewing techniques; however, it is ineffective for witnesses with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). One of its main components involves mentally reinstating the internal and external context that was experienced at encoding. We report evidence showing that it is the mental...
Vous trouverez ci-après le tirétiré`tiréà part de votre article au formatélectroniqueformat´formatélectronique (pdf) : La mémoire des autistes : une clé potentielle pour une meilleure compréhension de leurs difficultés sociocognitives ? paru dans Revue de neuropsychologie, 2013, Volume 5, Numéro 4 John Libbey Eurotext Ce tirétiré`tiréà part numériq...
Background: It is well established that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience difficulties in utilising conceptual relations among stimuli to facilitate memory (Tager-Flusberg, 1991; Brit J Dev Psych, 9, 417-413). The reasons for this difficulty, however, remain unclear. According to the Enhanced Perceptual Functioning theory (...
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is estimated to affect around 1% of the population, and is characterised by impairments in social interaction, communication, and behavioural flexibility. A number of risk factors indicate that individuals with ASD may become victims or witnesses of crimes. In addition to their social and communication deficits, peopl...