1 Northwestern University, USA.
2 St. John's University, USA.
Autism. 2018 Apr;22(3):335-344. doi: 10.1177/1362361316677957. Epub 2017 Jan 17.
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder demonstrate narrative (i.e. storytelling) difficulties which can significantly impact their ability to form and maintain social relationships. However, existing research has not comprehensively documented these impairments in more open-ended, emotionally evocative situations common to daily interactions. Computational linguistic measures offer a promising complement to traditional hand-coding methods of narrative analysis and in this study were applied together with hand coding of narratives elicited with emotionally salient scenes from the Thematic Apperception Test. In total, 19 individuals with autism spectrum disorder and 14 typically developing controls were asked to tell stories about six images from the Thematic Apperception Test. Both structural and qualitative aspects of narrative were assessed using a hand-coding system and Latent Semantic Analysis, an automated computational measure of semantic similarity. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder demonstrated significant difficulties with the use of complex syntax to integrate their narratives and problems explaining characters' intentions. These and other key narrative skills were strongly related to narrative competence scores derived from Latent Semantic Analysis, which also distinguished the autism spectrum disorder group from controls. Together, results underscore key narrative impairments in autism spectrum disorder and support the promise of Latent Semantic Analysis as a valuable tool for the quantitative assessment of complex language abilities.
自闭症谱系障碍个体表现出叙事（即讲故事）困难，这会严重影响他们形成和维持社交关系的能力。然而，现有的研究并没有全面记录在更开放、情感唤起的日常互动情境中这些障碍。计算语言学测量方法为叙事分析的传统手工编码方法提供了一个很有前途的补充，在这项研究中，它与从主题统觉测试中提取的情感相关场景的叙事的手工编码一起应用。总共有 19 名自闭症谱系障碍个体和 14 名典型发展对照者被要求讲述六个主题统觉测试图像的故事。使用手工编码系统和潜在语义分析（一种自动计算语义相似性的方法）评估了叙事的结构和定性方面。自闭症谱系障碍个体在使用复杂语法整合他们的叙事以及解释角色意图方面存在显著困难。这些和其他关键的叙事技能与潜在语义分析得出的叙事能力评分密切相关，这也将自闭症谱系障碍组与对照组区分开来。总之，研究结果强调了自闭症谱系障碍中的关键叙事障碍，并支持潜在语义分析作为评估复杂语言能力的有价值工具的前景。
