Glossary

Acronyms

Terms

Anoetic, noetic and autonoetic consciousness

Also described as anoetic, noetic and autonoetic awareness: different forms of human consciousness. ‘Anoetic’ means ‘without knowing’ awareness, described as implicit or non-declarative (can’t be spoken about) and is the type of consciousness associated with procedural and perceptual memory. ‘Noetic’ refers to ‘knowing’ consciousness, is associated with semantic memory and is explicit and declarative (can be spoken about). ‘Autonoetic’ consciousness is ‘self-knowing’ awareness and is characterised by ‘mental time travel’, which is the means of retrieval of episodic memories. Along with noetic consciousness, autonoetic consciousness is explicit and declarative.

Central coherence

An information-processing style: strong central coherence refers to a ‘top-down’, ‘global’ or gestalt style of thinking; weak central coherence refers to a ‘bottom-up’ or detailed-processing style.

Eidetic imagery

Eidetic imagery, or memory, is defined as ‘a rare form of visual memory … distinguished from ordinary visual imagery by its vividness and by the fact that it is “seen” projected in front of the viewer as opposed to being merely remembered’ (Furst, Gardner & Kamiya, 1974, p. 603).

Episodic memory

The human long-term learning and memory system that registers personal experience. Retrieval of memories from episodic memory is characterised by ‘mental time travel’. Episodic memory is responsible for complex mental functions such as abstract reasoning, relational memory, memory binding, simultaneous processing, executive functions, temporality, source memory and attribution. It is explicit and declarative. Episodic memories are said to be ‘episodic’ in that they are incomplete and change from recall to recall, depending on salience and reason for recall. The latest maturing form of memory, it relies on pre-frontal cortex development.

Human Learning and Memory Systems

The memory systems model proposed by Schacter and Tulving (1994) that has been widely adopted in the neuroscience and autism research literature. Consists of five ‘systems’ of human learning and memory: procedural, perceptual, semantic, episodic and working memory.

Memory binding

Memory binding is a function of episodic memory, where the relationship between elements is stored in memory in addition to the elements themselves, e.g., the spatial, temporal, affective contextual elements of an experienced event are bound together with the memory of the event itself in episodic memory.

Mental time travel

The means of recalling a personally experienced event: an act of autonoetic awareness. One mentally travels into one’s past and re-experiences elements of an event, including the event’s contextual detail (source memory) such as location, subjective sense of time and emotion.

Neurotypical (NT)

A term used in the autism literature to describe typically developing individuals. Usually used to refer to adults, while the term ‘typically developing’ is used to refer to children and adolescents: e.g., neurotypical adult, typically developing child.

Perceptual Representation System (PRS)

The human long-term learning and memory system that registers experience and sensation. Along with procedural memory it is implicit and non-declarative. Early developing.

Procedural memory

Commonly referred to using terms such as ‘tactile memory’ or ‘muscle memory’, procedural memory is long-term memory for motor actions and skills that become automatic. It is implicit and non-declarative. Early developing.

Prototype

A symbolic representation in memory of an item, category or concept, e.g., a dog, a happy face. Not a remembered instance of the category but a summary representation that incorporates the salient criteria for membership of the category. Comparison with a single representational prototype is more efficient than comparing an unknown item, in order to label or categorise it, with every previously encountered instance.

Relational memory

Associated with memory binding, relational memory is a function of episodic thinking and memory, where the relationship between events or ideas is stored in memory, along with the ideas themselves. In contrast to the single-item processing of semantic memory, relational memory affords a capacity for simultaneousness processing, where one idea or event is processed simultaneously in light of its relation to others. Foundational to executive functionality, e.g., in prioritising, sequencing, planning, etc.

Remember vs. know responses

In Tulving’s human learning and memory systems model (Schacter & Tulving, 1994), acts of memory recall that are attributable to noetic awareness are described as ‘know’ responses, such as the recall of factual information: ‘I know Paris is the capital city of France’. Acts of memory recall attributable to autonoetic awareness are described as ‘remember’ responses, which relate to mentally re-experiencing a personally experienced event: ‘I remember how beautiful Paris looked at night in summer’.

Schema

An abstract, mental representation of ideas, notions, phenomena or concepts that incorporates relational information. An example of the use of mental organisational strategies or top-down processing. More memory-efficient than, and confers understanding beyond, processing and remembering single items without relationships. From a constructivist perspective, a schema represents a personally constructed understanding of a concept. Associated with the notion of a ‘conceptual framework’.

Semantic memory

The human long-term learning and memory system that symbolically represents single-item factual information. It is explicit and declarative. Unlike episodic memories, the content matter of factual memory does not change over time, e.g. 2 + 2 = 4, regardless of how one feels or why one recalls the fact. Later developing.

Source memory

Memory for the contextual detail of a personally experienced event that is encoded, along with the memory, at the source: spatial (location), temporality (subjective time), affect (emotion). Source memory confers attribution: e.g. temporal – ‘before’, ‘during’ or ‘after’ my visit to Paris, location – ‘I remember standing in the queue to go up the Eiffel Tower’, emotion – ‘I remember how beautiful the lights were at night’. Factual memories do not include source information, they are context-less and are therefore said to be ‘single-item’.

Theory of mind (ToM)

The capacity for meta-representation: to know that oneself and other people have minds and are capable of different mental states. Mental states include thoughts, emotions, attitudes and physical sensations. Closely associated with the notion of metacognition.

Typically developing (TD)

A term used in the autism literature to describe individuals whose neural developmental pathway conforms to the expected pattern of typical development in contrast to the neural development of an individual with AS. See also neurotypical (NT).

Working memory

Working memory is the location of time limited, ‘online’ information-processing. Working memory is the interface with the long-term memory systems: encoding and retrieval to and from the long-term memory systems is via working memory.