Biomedical subjects

Yoko Kamio

Publications and source records attributed to Yoko Kamio.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2007

Memory illusion in high-functioning autism and Asperger's disorder.

In this study, 13 individuals with high-functioning autism (HFA), 15 individuals with Asperger's disorder (AD), and age-, and IQ-matched controls were presented a list of sentences auditorily. Participants then evaluated semantically related but new sentences and reported whether they were old or new. The total rates of false recognition for semantically related sentences were similar among the three groups. Nevertheless, memory illusion on some aspects was reduced in HFA participants. These results suggest that HFA have difficulties in semantic association. Although individuals with AD showed no quantitative abnormalities of memory illusion, some contributing factors were atypical. These findings are discussed in terms of schema theory, enhanced perceptual processing hypothesis, and weak central coherence hypothesis.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2007

Atypical lexical/semantic processing in high-functioning autism spectrum disorders without early language delay.

Although autism is associated with impaired language functions, the nature of semantic processing in high-functioning pervasive developmental disorders (HFPDD) without a history of early language delay has been debated. In this study, we aimed to examine whether the automatic lexical/semantic aspect of language is impaired or intact in these population. Eleven individuals with Asperger's Disorder (AS) or HFPDD-Not Otherwise Specified (NOS) and age-, IQ-, and gender-matched typically developing individuals performed a semantic decision task in four conditions using an indirect priming paradigm. Semantic priming effects were found for near-semantically related word pairs in the controls, whereas this was not the case in the AS or HFPDDNOS participants. This finding suggests similarities in the underlying semantic processing of language across PDD subtypes.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

Automatic processing of emotional faces in high-functioning pervasive developmental disorders: An affective priming study.

This study examined automatic processing of emotional faces in individuals with high-functioning Pervasive Developmental Disorders (HFPDD) using an affective priming paradigm. Sixteen participants (HFPDD and matched controls) were presented with happy faces, fearful faces or objects in both subliminal and supraliminal exposure conditions, followed by Japanese ideographs for which the participants provided liking ratings. In the HFPDD group, affective priming was not found in either condition; the control group showed affective priming for both emotional faces under the subliminal condition and only for happy faces under the supraliminal condition. Results suggest that the social deficit in autism may derive in part from a failure in evaluating the emotional significance of emotional faces, a function for which the amygdala plays an important role.

Affect↗

PubMed2003

Long-term memory in high-functioning autism: controversy on episodic memory in autism reconsidered.

Two studies were conducted to examine the nature of verbal long-term memory (LTM) in people with autism. In Study 1, undergraduate students showed better LTM and more verbal associations for concrete than abstract nouns. Probability of recall of the nouns strongly correlated with the number of associations with those nouns. In Study 2, unlike controls, autistic subjects did not show superior recall of concrete over abstract nouns despite overall comparable performance. A highly significant correlation between probability of recall and associative value was found only in the controls. Furthermore, there was an unusual correlation between LTM performance and a nonverbal measure in the autistic group. The results were discussed in terms of the relation between episodic memory and semantic memory.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

Paradoxical autonomic response to mental tasks in autism.

Autonomic responses to mental tasks requiring sustained attention were examined in individuals with autism and age- and ability-matched controls. Cardiac autonomic function (CAF) was evaluated based on heart rate variability. While the control group showed a significant decrease in the parasympathetic function during mental tasks, the autistic group showed no significant changes in CAF. When examined individually, parasympathetic function was suppressed in all subjects in the control group. On the other hand, parasympathetic function was activated in half of the autistic subjects. The paradoxical autonomic response suggests that some autistic subjects were more stressed under 'resting' conditions than while performing mechanical or repetitive mental tasks. The results seem to support autonomic hyperarousal in some people with autism.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2002

Long-term memory and levels-of-processing in autism.

Prior studies reported that long-term memory (LTM) was basically unimpaired in individuals with autism. However, people with autism have been found to perform worse than ability-matched controls when verbal materials to be remembered are semantically related. In normal subjects, semantic processing of verbal materials facilitates LTM better than 'shallow' (phonological or perceptual) processing, which is known as the levels-of-processing effect. In this study, the relationship between LTM and semantic processing was investigated using a levels-of-processing task. In Study 1, a levels-of-processing task was conducted on healthy volunteers, which confirmed the levels-of-processing effect with our task. In study 2, the same task was conducted on autistic subjects with mild or no mental retardation and ability-matched controls. The levels-of-processing effect was confirmed in the control group. Although overall performance in the two groups was comparable, the levels-of-processing effect was not found in the autistic group. LTM resulting from perceptual processing was better in the autistic group than in the control group, indicating superior "rote memory" in individuals with autism. Furthermore, the pattern of correlations between LTM performance and cognitive measures differed greatly between the two groups. The lack of the levels-of-processing effect, which has not been reported in other psychiatric or neuropathological conditions, suggests an abnormal relationship between semantic memory and episodic memory in individuals with autism.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2002

A lack of self-consciousness in autism.

OBJECTIVE: This study investigated self-consciousness in autism. METHOD: An incidental memory task was conducted on 18 adults with high-functioning autism and 18 normal comparison subjects. Three kinds of orienting questions (phonological, semantic, and self-referent, i.e., "Does the word describe you?") were asked about target words (adjectives for personality traits) in order to induce different types of processing. This was followed by an unexpected recognition test. RESULTS: While semantic processing resulted in better memory than phonological processing in both groups, self-referent processing yielded better memory performance than semantic processing in the comparison group but not in the autistic group. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest deficits in self-consciousness in individuals with autism.

Adult↗