Cannot retrieve information from memory

[Sally44]

I have posted a question regarding this previously, but got no response.  I was talking with an OT recently, who advised I should do some mental information retrieval exercises for my son because he seems to have difficulty with certain types of memory retrieval.  Could you give me more information about the types of memory recall there are and where I could find out more information about it.  For example my son has problems with recall if he is not given any cues or choices.  If he is given a multi choice set of answers he can always get the answer right.  So he needs the associative prompt to recall it.  For example if you show him a picture of the word 'come' and ask him what word is it, he cannot answer because he cannot retrieve what that word is called.  But if you ask him to point to the word that says 'come' he can do that because you have said the word and therefore he can associate it with what 'come' looks like.

[Sally44]

My understanding is that they are using that type of system at his school at the moment.  But he still isn't getting it.  Even when we use something that motivates him he doesn't seem to be able to retrieve information and he gets very upset about it.  Sometimes he gives up trying to tell us something because he cannot access the words.  He says 'they float around in my brain'.  I don't think I would be able to use the motivation of the TV (although he loves TV), because if I had to stop him every 5 minutes he would have a meltdown every time and it usually takes him a fair amount of time (over an hour) to recover.
If that is the only type of thing that works, then I suppose we'll have to continue with that.  But I wondered if there is a specific problem that some people with autism have of not being able to access information regardless of the fact that he knows it.  There are times when something triggers information he has stored.  It might be something I say or something he sees and then he is like a recording and just replays an amazing amount of information.  But when he has finished and you ask him about it, he seems as surprised as everyone else as to how he knew that!
I wondered if he really doesn't recognise things 'visually', (and he isn't a visual learner) but somehow when he is given a choice of things he is able to bring in his ability of 'pattern recognition' to help him identify the correct answer?

[Jason C Bourret, Ph.D., BCBA-D]

It sounds like the problem you are facing with your son is that he is able to correctly answer questions given some cues but not others.  In other words, given just a card with the word “tree” written on it and the prompt “what does this say?” your son might not be able to answer correctly whereas, if he was three different cards with a different word on each and the prompt “which one says tree,” he would be able to answer correctly.  An effective way of dealing with issues of this kind is to treat them as specific deficits in learning and develop educational programming focusing on teaching him to respond correctly in these particular situations.  A variety of prompting and prompt fading strategies have been shown to be effective in teaching children who display behavior patterns similar to your son’s to be able to correctly respond in situations where they initially have difficulty.  Typically, in a training program of this sort, you might start in the situation in which he does answer correctly.  For example, you might start with one card that says “tree,” one that says “car,” and one that says “fence.”  You might ask him what the “tree” card says and if he doesn’t reply in five seconds say “It says tree, what does it say?.”  Here you have arranged two prompts.  The first is representative of the situations your son has more difficulty with and the second is one that he is likely to respond correctly to.  The trick is to teach your son to respond correctly to the first prompt get rid of the second prompt.  This usually requires there to be a sufficient source of motivation and a gradual fading of the second prompt.  For motivation, I recommend using your son’s favorite movie, activity, snack, etc…  You might arrange things so that he gets to watch five minutes of his favorite movie each time he responds correctly to the first prompt.  This might look something like the following.  

You ask him “what does this say” pointing to the “tree” card.  If he answers correctly, allow him to watch the movie for five minutes.  If he doesn’t answer correctly in five seconds, you say “it says tree, what does it say?”  If he answers correctly, you wait another five seconds and start over with the first prompt (“what does this say?”).  If he gets it right this time, he gets to watch his movie, if not, it’s on to the second prompt.  If he doesn’t answer correctly to the second prompt in five seconds, repeat it.  

By arranging this sequence, he only gets to watch the movie when he responds to the more general prompt and can get a lot of practice answering prompts of this sort.  A good method for fading out the second prompt is to increasingly delay it.  In other words, after the first prompt (“what does this say?”) he might have to wait 10, 20, or 30 seconds for the more specific prompt.  Training procedures like this conducted with sufficient frequency (for example, for a half hour a day) can be quite effective in teaching children with challenges similar to your son’s to respond correctly in contexts in which they typically have difficulty.