Background: School-age children rely on prospective memory (PM) to complete various tasks in the future. Previous research suggests children with autism spectrum disorders exhibit PM impairment, but whether PM impairment extends to children with higher autistic traits remains unclear. In the present study, we aimed to compare PM performance in children with higher and lower autistic traits and to examine potentially differential associations to executive functions.

Method: Forty pairs of children with higher and lower autistic traits between age 6- to 12-years old completed event-, time-, and activity-based PM tasks, and two executive function tasks (i.e., inhibition and working memory). We also collected parents-rated PM abilities using the Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire for Children.

Results: The two groups showed similar performance in both executive function tasks, the 3 PM tasks and parents-reported PM in daily life. In children with lower autistic traits, performance of the time-based PM task was correlated with working memory whereas it was correlated with inhibition function in children with higher autistic traits. Moreover, children with higher autistic traits exhibited a continuous reduction of time monitoring behavior across trials, leading to worse performance in the last PM trial compared with children with lower autistic traits.

Conclusion: Children with higher autistic traits showed intact executive functioning and similar PM performance as children with lower autistic traits, but they relied on different types of executive functions to complete time-based PM tasks. Moreover, children with higher autistic traits showed reduced time monitoring behavior and unstable PM performance across time.