Story Goodness in Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and in Optimal Outcomes From ASD

Abstract

Purpose: This study examined narrative quality of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) using a well-studied "story goodness" coding system. Method: Narrative samples were analyzed for distinct aspects of story goodness and rated by naïve readers on dimensions of story goodness, accuracy, cohesiveness, and oddness. Adolescents with high-functioning ASD were compared with adolescents with typical development (TD; n = 15 per group). A second study compared narratives from adolescents across three groups: ASD, TD, and youths with "optimal outcomes," who were diagnosed with ASD early in development but no longer meet criteria for ASD and have typical behavioral functioning.Results: In both studies, the ASD group's narratives had lower composite quality scores compared with peers with typical development. In Study 2, narratives from the optimal outcomes group were intermediate in scores and did not differ significantly from those of either other group. However, naïve raters were able to detect qualitative narrative differences across groups. Conclusions: Findings indicate that pragmatic deficits in ASD are salient and could have clinical relevance. Furthermore, results indicate subtle differences in pragmatic language skills for individuals with optimal outcomes despite otherwise typical language skills in other domains. These results highlight the need for clinical interventions tailored to the specific deficits of these populations.

Brief Report: Acoustic Evidence for Increased Articulatory Stability in the Speech of Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…Other authors used a narrative retelling, based on a video-tape, to elicit spontaneous speech (Diehl et al 2009). However, as already mentioned in the introduction, building a coherent narrative is also known to present difficulties for people with ASD (Baixauli et al 2016;Stirling et al 2014;Banney et al 2015;Canfield et al 2016)-in fact, this is the reason why it features in the ADOS-2 (Lord et al 2012).…”

Collaborative competence in dialogue: Pragmatic language impairment as a window onto the psychopathology of autism

“…Arnold et al, 2009;) that a more ecologically valid assessment of pragmatic language ability may be found via assessment of language in naturalistic contexts, with the full range of cognitive and social demands this places on the participants. Canfield et al (2016) reported that coding schemes used in their study failed to detect systematic differences in narrative quality between children with and without autism, but naïve raters could still detect subtle difficulties in the narratives of children with autism nonetheless. It is therefore necessary for linguistic analysis to focus on detailed aspects of conversation, in order to identify the subtle ways in which individuals with autism have difficulty in conversing (Arnold et al, 2009): modifying the approach of conversation analysis may offer us a means to do this.…”

“…Previous research has also based assessment of pragmatic ability (i.e. narrative ability) on segments from the ADOS (Canfield et al, 2016). While the ADOS includes codes for pragmatic language ability (e.g.…”

Perceptual inference is impaired in individuals with ASD and intact in individuals who have lost the autism diagnosis

“…Across each of these studies, participants in the LAD group scored in the average range or higher, with performance similar to (or higher than) that of the TD group. Experimental behavioral studies have revealed similar performance in LAD and TD groups for ratings of likeability and broader autism phenotype 17 , and for a variety of pragmatic language abilities 18 – 21 . This behavioral work provides a foundation for further exploration of the range of possible outcomes (including questions about how to define an optimal outcome 22 ), and the nature of the neural systems that support such sharp changes in developmental trajectories 23 .…”