Naman Tal, Fichman Sveta, Altman Carmit, Sukenik Nufar
Faculty of Education, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel.
Autism Dev Lang Impair. 2025 Jun 12;10:23969415251321824. doi: 10.1177/23969415251321824. eCollection 2025 Jan-Dec.
Narrative abilities are crucial for effective communication and social interactions. Children with autism often struggle with narrative production and comprehension due to their unique developmental profiles. This study examines the macrostructure and microstructure narrative skills of Hebrew speaking children with autism compared to age-matched typically developing (TD) children, aiming to uncover specific areas of difficulty and proficiency.
The study included 64 children aged 6-8 years, divided equally between those diagnosed with autism and TD peers. Participants underwent narrative production tasks involving both fictional and everyday narratives, and modes of generating and retelling. Narrative comprehension was also assessed immediately after each task. Macrostructure analysis examined the organization and structure of the narratives while microstructure analysis focused on linguistic elements such as syntax and word use.
Both groups exhibited comparable overall narrative production and comprehension skills. However, subtle distinctions were noted such that children with autism showed difficulties in creating complex narrative structures and integrating syntactic elements effectively compared to their TD peers. Despite the differences, children with autism demonstrated notable strengths, particularly in the retelling mode, where they sometimes achieved higher scores in the use of function words. Both groups achieved similar scores in narrative comprehension tasks.
The findings indicate that while children with autism can develop narrative skills comparable to their TD peers, they continue to experience specific challenges that affect their narrative production, particularly in syntactic complexity. Although not always statistically significant, these findings suggest that autistic children possess narrative abilities that emerge under certain conditions, emphasizing the importance of considering varied narrative contexts in assessments.
The study highlights the need for targeted narrative intervention programs that address the specific challenges and strengths faced by children with autism. Educational strategies should focus on enhancing syntactic construction and narrative structure to improve both academic and social communication outcomes.
叙事能力对于有效的沟通和社交互动至关重要。自闭症儿童由于其独特的发育特征，在叙事生成和理解方面常常面临困难。本研究考察了说希伯来语的自闭症儿童与年龄匹配的发育正常（TD）儿童在宏观结构和微观结构叙事技巧方面的情况，旨在发现特定的困难和优势领域。
该研究纳入了64名6至8岁的儿童，自闭症儿童和TD儿童各占一半。参与者接受了叙事生成任务，包括虚构和日常叙事以及生成和复述模式。每个任务完成后立即评估叙事理解能力。宏观结构分析考察叙事的组织和结构，而微观结构分析则关注句法和词汇使用等语言元素。
两组在总体叙事生成和理解技能方面表现相当。然而，也注意到了一些细微的差异，即与TD儿童相比，自闭症儿童在创建复杂叙事结构和有效整合句法元素方面存在困难。尽管存在差异，但自闭症儿童表现出显著的优势，特别是在复述模式中，他们在功能词的使用上有时得分更高。两组在叙事理解任务中的得分相似。
研究结果表明，虽然自闭症儿童能够发展出与TD儿童相当的叙事技能，但他们仍然面临影响其叙事生成的特定挑战，特别是在句法复杂性方面。尽管这些发现并不总是具有统计学意义，但它们表明自闭症儿童在某些条件下具备叙事能力，强调了在评估中考虑不同叙事背景的重要性。
该研究强调需要有针对性的叙事干预计划，以应对自闭症儿童面临的特定挑战和优势。教育策略应侧重于加强句法构建和叙事结构，以改善学术和社交沟通成果。
