The study of working memory effects on Autism

This study investigated autism traits in the general population and how it relates to memory. Participants
were Year 1 Psychology students of City, University of London. The students received credits in
exchange for participating. The experiments were conducted in labs in City, University of London. The
working memory experiment were displayed on a computer screen: Stimuli were presented on a computer
screen using the MATLAB psychophysics toolbox, responses were collected with “YES” or “NO” keys –
pre-marked on the keyboard. Stimuli: colour photos, familiar everyday objects from Brady et al 2008.
Stimuli were randomly selected for each participant from set of 2400 photos. Photos were presented
subtending to a visual angle of 12.7 x 12.7 degrees
The working memory task will ask participants to first memorize a sequence of pictures and then they
will be asked to identify them in a test phase.
Data will be analyzed using correlational statistical methods to assess the relationship between the
questionnaire scores and the scores on each task.
The working memory task was replicated from: http://endress.org/publications/tmp-mem-capacity.pdf –
with some changes made to the adopted working memory task as attached “working memory methods”
Participants also completed the AQ – the file has been attached