Cosmic Lab, Department of Philosophy, Communication and Performing Arts, Roma Tre University, Via Ostiense 234-236, 00146, Rome, Italy.
Department of Languages and Literatures, Communication, Education and Society, University of Udine, Via Margreth, 3, 33100, Udine, Italy.
J Autism Dev Disord. 2024 Oct;54(10):3759-3776. doi: 10.1007/s10803-023-06096-2. Epub 2023 Sep 1.
Several studies suggest that a valuable tool to examine linguistic skills in communication disorders is offered by procedures of narrative discourse assessment. Following this line of research, we present an exploratory study aimed to investigate storytelling abilities of autistic children to better define the characteristics of their story production. Participants included 41 autistic children and 41 children with typical development aged between 7.02 and 11.03 years matched on age, gender, level of formal education, intelligence quotient, working memory, attention skills, theory of mind, and phonological short-term memory. Narrative production was assessed by analysing the language samples obtained through the "Nest Story" description task. A multilevel analysis including micro- and macro-linguistic variables was adopted for narrative assessment. Group differences emerged on both micro- and macro-linguistic dimensions: autistic children produced narratives with more phonological errors and semantic paraphasias (microlinguistic variables) as well as more errors of global coherence and a fewer number of visible events and inferred events (macrolinguistic variables) than the control group.This study shows that even autistic children with adequate cognitive skills display several limitations in their narrative competence and that such weaknesses affect both micro- and macrolinguistic aspects of story production.
几项研究表明，叙事话语评估程序为检查交流障碍中的语言技能提供了一种有价值的工具。沿着这条研究路线，我们进行了一项探索性研究，旨在调查自闭症儿童的讲故事能力，以更好地定义他们故事创作的特征。参与者包括 41 名自闭症儿童和 41 名具有典型发展的儿童，这些儿童在年龄、性别、正规教育程度、智商、工作记忆、注意力技能、心理理论和语音短期记忆方面与年龄相匹配，年龄在 7.02 至 11.03 岁之间。通过分析通过“Nest Story”描述任务获得的语言样本来评估叙事产生。采用包括微观和宏观语言变量的多层次分析进行叙事评估。在微观和宏观语言维度上都出现了组间差异：自闭症儿童的叙述产生了更多的语音错误和语义替代（微观语言变量），以及更多的整体连贯性错误和较少的可见事件和推断事件（宏观语言变量）比对照组。这项研究表明，即使是认知能力足够的自闭症儿童，在叙事能力方面也表现出了多种局限性，这些弱点影响了故事创作的微观和宏观语言方面。
