There is no difference in time in the spatial working memory of older people who have autistic qualities and those who are neurotypically find a new study led by UCL researchers.
The new research, published in The gerontologistis the first study to investigate the age -related degree of deterioration of spatial working memory in the elderly who may be autistic.
Spatial working memory helps people to remember information and use about where things are and how they are arranged. It is usually used for tasks where navigation spaces or the organization of objects include.
As people get older, spatial working memory can sometimes become less effective, which is an example of cognitive decline.
This decline can be part of normal aging, but it can also be more pronounced in disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Spatial memory can also be influenced by autistic people – especially when it comes to tasks that relate to remembering and organizing visual information. Consequently, there has been a discussion about whether autism can lead to an increased risk of cognitive decline and, by extension, future dementia.
For the new study, the research team used data of 10,060 people over 50 in the UK in the UK who were assessed as autistic properties – such as difficulty with social communication and interaction, and limited or repetitive behavior or interests – of the protection study.
They discovered that 1.5% of the cohort had high levels of autistic properties and may be autistic, which is similar to the prevalence estimates of autism in the general population.
The team analyzed this data using a method called Growth MixTure modeling to see how the spatial working memory of the participants changed over a period of seven years.
The findings of the research showed that most people, whether they had high levels of autistic qualities or not, maintained their cognitive skills over time. This suggested that autistic people had not had a cognitive decline in this domain before.
Corresponding author, professor Joshua Stott (UCL Psychology & Language Sciences) said: “Autism is a neurological state associated with differences in social communication and repetitive patterns of sensory motor behavior.
“It is known that autistic people often also have cognitive differences with regard to non-autistic people. In the light of this and a current global world-minded focus on the prevention of cognitive decline and dementia, there has been considerable interest or having a neurological disorder such as autism your risk of cognitive cognitive cognitive cognitive Cognitive cognitive cognitive cognitive cognitive cognitive cognitive cognitive cognitive cognitive cognitive cognitive cognitive cognitive and potential dementia can also influence.
“Our work does not support any difference between autistic people and neurotypical people in terms of an increased risk of age -related cognitive decline, while there are limitations and more studies are needed, look directly at other aspects of cognitive decline and dementia risk in the community in the position of samples in the hopefully proof of this study offers this research offered this study” this study offers useful proof “
Earlier research has shown that there can be higher dementia rates in older adults with autism.
These studies, which look at health care data, are, however, hindered by the very low diagnostic percentage of autism in the elderly (about one in nine adults older than 50 is diagnosed in the VK), which means that they only look at a very specific and small subsample of autistic people, who probably have more health care problems in general people in general.
In the meantime, other studies that support theory that autism has no extra effect on the cognitive decline, rather only looked at whether autistic people differ in cognition of non-autistic (neurotypic) people at one time-in place of changes over time.
Insight into how aging each other crosses with autism is an important but subject to subject. Getting older often comes with different changes, also in health and cognition. Since autistic people are at a greater risk of certain health problems and have cognitive differences with non-autistic people, we need to know whether autistic people will have different patterns of aging than their non-autistic peers.
This study offers some reassuring evidence that some aspects of cognition change in the same way to autistic and non-autistic populations. “
Dr. Gavin Stewart, senior author, British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London
Future studies must test people longer and include a broader age category to better understand memory changes. These findings must also be replicated in samples that meet diagnostic criteria for autism.
This work was supported by the Dunhill Medical Trust, the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), Economic and Social Research Council (ERC), Alzheimer’s Research UK and the British Academy.
Study restrictions
The study only included people who could use a computer and internet, so it may not represent all older adults in the UK.
In the meantime, the test for autistic qualities mainly looked at social and communication problems, not at other autism-related behavior, which can influence the results.
And most participants were white, so the findings may not apply to people with a different ethnic background.
Source:
Journal Reference:
Ghai, S., et al .. (2025). The association between autism spectrum characteristics and age -related spatial working, a large -scale longitudinal research. The gerontologist. doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnaf096.