Prospective Memory Performance of Autistic Adults in Everyday Life: The Role of Stress and Motivation

Prospective memory (PM) is the ability to remember to carry out intended actions in the future. The present study investigated the PM performance of autistic adults in everyday life. A total of 29 autistic participants and 30 controls matched for age, gender, and cognitive abilities completed various PM tasks (time-based vs. event-based; externally-assigned vs. self-assigned), integrated into a three-day Experience Sampling Method (ESM) assessment. The ESM survey assessed other activities performed during the 3 days, participants' motivation, daily routine, and perceived daily-life stress. No group differences were found between autistic and control participants in any of the various PM tasks. Autistic participants did not differ from control participants in the types of everyday activities performed or in motivation, but showed higher levels of perceived stress. This is the first study to investigate PM performance of autistic individuals in everyday life. The results suggest that autistic adults show no PM difficulties in naturalistic PM tasks.