Westerveld Marleen F, Roberts Jacqueline M A
School of Allied Health Sciences, Griffith University, Southport, Queensland, Australia.
Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism, Long Pocket, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Lang Speech Hear Serv Sch. 2017 Oct 5;48(4):260-272. doi: 10.1044/2017_LSHSS-17-0003.
This study described the oral narrative comprehension and production skills of verbal preschool-age children on the autism spectrum and investigated correlations between oral narrative ability and norm-referenced language test performance.
Twenty-nine preschool-age children (aged 4;0-5;9 years;months) with autism, who obtained an age-equivalent score of at least 36 months on the expressive communication subscale of the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales-Second Edition (Sparrow, Cicchetti, & Balla, 2005), participated. Children listened to an unfamiliar fictional narrative and answered comprehension questions afterward. After listening to the narrative a second time, children were asked to retell the narrative without picture support. Narratives were transcribed and analyzed for length, semantic diversity, grammatical complexity and accuracy, intelligibility, inclusion of critical events, and narrative stage.
All children participated in the comprehension task, and 19 children produced an analyzable narrative retell. Compared with published data on typically developing children, significant difficulties were observed in narrative comprehension, intelligibility, and grammatical accuracy. Most of the children told descriptive or action sequences, with only 1 child producing an abbreviated episode. Significant positive correlations were found (a) between performance on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Fourth Edition (Dunn & Dunn, 2007) and semantic diversity and narrative comprehension and (b) between parent-reported receptive communication competence (Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales-Second Edition) and narrative comprehension.
This study provides preliminary evidence of specific difficulties in oral narrative comprehension and production skills in verbal preschoolers on the autism spectrum.
本研究描述了患有自闭症谱系障碍的学龄前儿童的口语叙事理解和表达能力，并调查了口语叙事能力与常模参照语言测试表现之间的相关性。
29名患有自闭症的学龄前儿童（年龄在4岁0个月至5岁9个月之间）参与了研究，他们在《文兰适应行为量表第二版》（斯帕罗、西契迪和巴拉，2005年）的表达性沟通分量表上获得了至少36个月的年龄当量分数。孩子们听了一个不熟悉的虚构叙事，之后回答理解问题。在再次听完叙事后，要求孩子们在没有图片支持的情况下复述叙事。对叙事进行转录，并分析其长度、语义多样性、语法复杂性和准确性、可理解性、关键事件的包含情况以及叙事阶段。
所有孩子都参与了理解任务，19名孩子进行了可分析的叙事复述。与已发表的关于发育正常儿童的数据相比，在叙事理解、可理解性和语法准确性方面观察到了显著困难。大多数孩子讲述的是描述性或动作序列，只有1名孩子讲述了一个简略的情节。发现了显著的正相关：（a）在《皮博迪图片词汇测试第四版》（邓恩和邓恩，2007年）的表现与语义多样性和叙事理解之间；（b）在家长报告的接受性沟通能力（《文兰适应行为量表第二版》）与叙事理解之间。
本研究为患有自闭症谱系障碍的学龄前儿童在口语叙事理解和表达能力方面存在特定困难提供了初步证据。
