Parents’ Strategies to Elicit Autobiographical Memories in Autism Spectrum Disorders, Developmental Language Disorders and Typically Developing Children

Abstract

Conversations about the past support the development of autobiographical memory. Parents’ strategies to elicit child's participation and recall during past event conversations were compared across three school-age diagnostic groups: autism spectrum disorder (ASD, n = 11), developmental language disorders (n = 11) and typically developing (TD, n = 11). We focused on the prevalence of directives versus enrichment of events. Groups did not differ in number of events, length, and total turns. However, parents of children with ASD produced more direct questions, corrections, and unrelated turns than parents of TD children. Results highlight how parents adjusted their conversational style to their child's communication difficulties to maximize interactions and how these strategies may affect the development of personal conversations.

Using Story-Based Interventions to Improve Episodic Memory in Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…59(p.506) What sparse literature is available on the topic suggests that parents adopt a more directive and less elaborative reminiscing style when interacting with their children with ASD. 60 Although such adjustments may help the child verbalize more accurate recollections (a laudable goal for children with ASD who are known to be less detailed and accurate in reports of past experience), they may not be optimal for supporting the development of memory in a truly episodic way. Goldman and DeNigris suggested that parents of children with ASD may have a "greater emphasis on external, objective and factual elements of the experience" and may adopt a conversational style that "more closely resembles an interview than a natural dialogue."…”

“…Yet, the manner in which this is done is crucially important in light of the previous finding that caregivers of children with ASD may focus on accuracy at the expense of an elaborative style whose goal is to construct a shared experience. 60 For the time being, we recommend that adult interlocutors issue gentle content corrections while adding information to the ongoing dialogue (e.g., child: "Sam was at the beach"; adult: "Sam wasn't at the beach. Remember, he couldn't come because he had a soccer game.…”

Telling Tales: Personal Event Narratives and Life Stories

“…Previous research has suggested that such information is retrieved from episodic memory and that this is impaired in individuals with ASD (Boucher & Mayes, 2011;Bowler et al, 2011). Goldman and DeNigris (2015) noted that parents of schoolage children with ASD engaged in more structured reminiscing than did parents of typically developing children. The reminiscing was not coconstructed.…”

Parental Mediation in the Improvement of Narrative Skills of High-Functioning Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…The parents engaged in role-play using transcripts of narrative conversations produced by individuals with ASD and by individuals with TD, which helped them to recognize the existing communicative gaps of this particular population. Because of prior research documenting difficulties that parents of individuals on the spectrum present in reminiscing with their children (Goldman & DeNigris, 2015), parents were not advised to encourage other family members who were not present for the training session to use these methods and strategies.…”

“…BAP features in parents may influence how they interact with their children, and there is some evidence to suggest parent BAP status is a potential moderator of the impact of parent-mediated interventions (Parr, Gray, Wighamn, McConachie, & LeCouteur, 2015). Goldman and DeNigris (2015) compared parents’ strategies for eliciting children’s participation in talk about the past across three groups of 11-year-olds: children with ASD, children with developmental language disorders, and children with TD. Those authors found that parents of children with ASD, to maximize interactions, produced more direct questions, corrections, and unrelated turns than parents of children with TD.…”