ORIGINAL ARTICLE Autobiographical memory in ADHD subtypes ROSA ANGELA FABIO & TINDARA CAPRÌ Department of Cognitive Science and Education, University of Messina, Messina, Italy Abstract Background Episodic autobiographical memory (EAM) has not been extensively investigated in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The objective of this study was to examine EAM in school-age children with ADHD in reference to the encoding period: recent memories (previous school years) and remote memories (first years of life). Methods A sample of 29 children with ADHD and 29 typically developing children, matched for age and gender, completed a questionnaire to assess EAM. These participants were recruited from an initial sample of 572 participants. Developmental differences in accessing and recalling specific personal events and episodic details in groups with ADHD were predicted. Results The control group showed a typical trend of EAM with fewer remote and episodic memories than recent ones. The ADHD groups showed a general EAM deficit. More precisely, the ADHD-I group performed equally poorly on remote and recent EAMs, whereas the ADHD-C group showed a higher number of remote EAMs than recent ones. Conclusions The findings suggest that EAM can be impaired in children with ADHD. Clinical and medicolegal implications of these results and the relation between age and childhood amnesia are discussed. Keywords: autobiographical memory, ADHD subtypes, episodic memory Introduction Episodic autobiographical memory (EAM) refers to personal events recollected in the context of a par- ticular time and place—the “what,”“where,” and “when”—and with some reference to oneself as a par- ticipant in the episode (Piolino, Desgranges, & Eustache, 2008; Tulving, 1985, 2001, 2002). Thanks to autonoetic consciousness (the kind of awareness accompanying phenomenological recol- lection), EAM gives rise to mental time travel, allow- ing the individual to relive previous specific events in a subjective way (Tulving, 1985, 2002). A body of research investigating the development of EAM in children revealed that EAM and the capacity for mental time travel appear between the ages of approximately 4–5 years (Perner, Kloo, & Gornik, 2007; Perner & Ruffmann, 1995; Piolino, Desgranges, et al., 2007). Moreover, EAM emerges in parallel with the development of language and con- ceptual knowledge, executive functions, working memory, the development of the nervous system, and the ability to understand the feelings and inten- tions of others as well as the self (Markowitsch & Welzer, 2009; Morrison & Conway, 2010; Nelson & Fivush, 2004; Picard, Reffuveille, Eustache, & Piolino, 2009; Sowell, Thompson, Holmes, Jernigan, & Toga, 1999; Sowell, Thompson, Tessner, & Toga, 2001). Morrison and Conway (2010) have suggested that the formation of conceptual knowledge from details in early personal memories first needs to be established before specific EAMs can be retrieved. Childhood amnesia would therefore be related to the time before this ability and EAM are formed (Markowitsch & Staniloiu, 2011). Picard et al. (2009) found that EAM undergoes developmental changes between early childhood and adolescence. The recent episodes of older chil- dren are more detailed and authentic than those of younger children, whereas remote ones remain mainly semantic in both older and younger children (Markowitsch & Staniloiu, 2011). Most likely, at the level of the brain, the establishment of inhibitory processes resulting from the late developing © 2014 Australasian Society for Intellectual Disability, Inc. Correspondence: Rosa Angela Fabio, Department of Cognitive Science and Education, University of Messina, Messina, Italy. E-mail: rafabio@unime.it Journal of Intellectual & Developmental Disability, 2014 http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/13668250.2014.983057