Evoked related potentials in Roediger and McDermott task in children with pervasive developmental disorders

Abstract

Roediger and McDermott (1995), advancing Deese's previous studies, demonstrated in laboratory the possibility to induce the formation of false memory by the means of stimuli which present strong semantic association among them. The observation of errors of false memory is well described and is related to the own processes of brain development. On the other hand, this effect is not observed in diseases such as autism and Savant Syndrome. In these cases, the induction of false memory by semantic association is reduced, evidencing a pattern of more literal record of information. Although the behavioral effect in these patients is known, little is known about its underlying neurophysiology. Thus, after the construction and adaptation of an instrument of false memory to record EEG, I present this Master's project which aims at investigating the relationships between behavioral performance and evoked potentials in literal and conceptual memory task (based on DRM paradigm) comparing subjects which are within the spectrum of Global Developmental Disorders with typical development control group. This study is aimed at understanding the neural mechanisms which underlie performance in the DRM task and at checking the differences and similarities between the group of patients and the typical development group. (AU)