Brief Report: Narratives of Personal Events in Children with Autism and Developmental Language Disorders: Unshared Memories

Abstract

Narrative analysis of personal events provides an opportunity for identifying autism specific issues related to language and social impairments. Eight personal events were elicited from three groups of schoolage children: 14 high-functioning with Autism Spectrum Disorders (HFA), 12 non-autistic with developmental language disorders (DLD), and 12 typically developing matched for chronological age and non-verbal IQ. The coding focused on narrative format (constituents) and style (coherence). The analyses indicate basic knowledge of conventional narrative format in all groups but a consistent lack of high-point in HFA children’s stories interpreted as a consequence of their lack of social understanding of narrative. The results suggest novel interventions to foster autobiographical memory in HFA children which may assist in their self-awareness development.

Appendices

Appendix 1

Format of Initial Answer

• 1. Narrative format (organized sequences of multiples sentences)

• 2. One sentence format (e.g., I have a party)

• 3. One word format (no narrative, e.g., party)

• 4. “I don’t know” answer

• 5. Off-topic (inadequate answer, e.g., I hate my brother)

• 6. Not applicable because the child did not experience the event

• 7. Refusal

Appendix 2

Narrative Conventional Elements (Stein 1988)

• 0: Absence

• 1: Presence

  • Opening: Formal beginning (e.g., once upon a time, once there was a boy)

  • Setting: Place, Time, Persons

  • Action: Simple or complex activity undertaken by protagonists at beginning of story

  • Obstacle: Event that complicates or interrupts the course of the initiating action and contributes to the story plot.

  • Resolution: Part of the narrative that follows the evaluation which resolves the event.

  • Ending: Final point

Appendix 3

Narrative Style

• –  Evaluation: Narrative clauses that reveal the attitude of the narrator towards the event and provide affective commentary on the event.

  • 0: No evaluation, flat rendering.

  • 1: Formulaic evaluation, e.g., “it’s great.”

  • 2: Evaluation concerns only physical environment, e.g., “this is the darkest cave.”

  • 3: Evaluation concerns elaborated people’s behavior or mental states, e.g., “I felt bad leaving her.”

• –  Coherence: Property of the whole narrative that ensures the logical interconnecting of units.

  • 0: Story violates the logical sequence of events

  • 1: Story follows a logical sequence (presence of causal markers).

• –  Goal directed: refers to a goal-directed sequence of events that are temporally and causally linked, e.g., “When I was a little girl, I really wanted to have a tool box for my birthday, I knew my dad wouldn’t buy it for me so I talked to my grandfather and told him what I really wanted, and the next day he got it for me, I was so happy.”

  • 0: Story is constructed without a goal, no motive, descriptive only.

  • 1: Story is constructed around a goal, a motive.

• –  High-point: Climactic moment, usually followed by an evaluation

  • 0: no high-point

  • 1: presence of a high-point

• –  Story type:

  • 0: Description only: refers to narratives containing no sequence structure, e.g., “it’s was an hotel we were in room 223”. Or temporal descriptive sequence of actions, e.g., “She was the teacher, her name was Mrs. Smith, she had long hair, she always had a skirt.”

  • 1: Action only. refers to a list of actions that are chronologically rather than causally ordered e.g., “Once I went to the zoo to see the panda, I took the train and I ate a picnic, I visited the panda and I fed the elephants, and I came home.”

  • 2: Intentional: refers to temporal and causally linked sequences of events, e.g., “There was this party at school last year I really wanted to go to and I didn’t know how to ask my Mom, so for two weeks I did all she wanted me to do and was really good, then I talked to her about the party and she said I could go because I behaved so well.”