Autistic adults and adults with sub-clinical autistic traits differ from non-autistic adults in social-pragmatic inferencing and narrative discourse

Since prior research has mostly focused on children, less is known about how autistic adults and adults with sub-clinical autistic traits interpret pragmatically complex social situations and the kind of narrative discourse they produce. 32 autistic young adults, 18 young adults with sub-clinical autistic traits and 34 non-autistic young adults participated this study. They were shown videos of social interactions which required complex pragmatic processing and were asked to freely narrate what they thought was occurring in each video. Their narratives were coded for aspects of social-pragmatic and narrative discourse. The results indicate that the autistic and sub-clinical groups differed from the comparison group in what they inferred as relevant video content. The narratives of the autistic group also differed from the comparison group in meaning, focus and emphasis on details. In addition, the comparison group produced more holistic narratives whereas the autistic and sub-clinical groups produced more atomistic narratives. Correlational findings indicated that perceptual reasoning has stronger associations with pragmatic inferencing in the autistic and sub-clinical groups than in the comparison group. This study suggests that autistic adults and adults with sub-clinical autistic traits differ from non-autistic adults in what they perceive to be relevant in their social world.

Lay Abstract

Previous social-pragmatic and narrative research involving autistic individuals has mostly focused on children. Little is known about how autistic adults and adults who have autistic traits but do not have a diagnosis of an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) interpret complex social situations and tell narratives about these situations. We asked 32 autistic young adults, 18 adults with autistic traits but no ASD diagnosis, and 34 non-autistic young adults to watch socially complex situations and freely tell narratives about what they thought was occurring in each situation. These narratives were analysed for how the participants had interpreted the situations and for the type of narratives they produced. We found that the groups had both similarities and differences. Regarding the differences, we found that the autistic adults and adults with autistic traits interpreted the situations differently from the non-autistic adults. The autistic adults found different aspects of the situations relevant, had different foci and placed greater importance on details than the non-autistic adults. The autistic adults and adults with autistic traits also differed from the non-autistic adults by having more detail- and event-focused narratives whereas the non-autistic adults were more likely to base their narratives on their own broad interpretations of the situations. Perceptual processing styles appeared to play a bigger role in interpreting the situations for the autistic adults and adults with autistic traits than the non-autistic adults. Our findings suggest that autistic adults and adults with autistic traits focus on different aspects in their social world than non-autistic adults.

How do autistic adults use syntactic and prosodic cues to manage spoken discourse?

Discourse studies investigating differences in the socio-communicative profiles of autistic (ASD) and neurotypical (NT) individuals have mostly relied on orthographic transcriptions, without taking prosodic information into account. However, atypical prosody is ubiquitous in ASD and a more accurate representation of their discourse abilities should also include prosodic cues. This exploratory study addresses this gap by segmenting the spoken discourse of 12 ASD and NT adults using the framework of Basic Discourse Units (BDUs). BDUs result from the mapping of syntactic boundaries on prosodic units, which can coincide in different ways and are associated with different discourse strategies. We hypothesized that the discourse of ASD adults would display more atypical strategies than NT adults, reflecting a 'pedantic' style and more difficulties in managing ongoing discourse. While ASD adults did not produce more discourse units associated with didactic or pedantic strategies than NT adults, they did produce less units associated with strategies of interactional regulation. This study provides initial evidence that multidimensional linguistic units, such as BDUs can help differentiate speech delivery strategies of ASD adults from those of their NT peers, even based on simple prosodic cues like silent pauses.

Gestures in Storytelling by Preschool Chinese-Speaking Children With and Without Autism

Previous findings on gestural impairment in autism are inconsistent, while scant evidence came from Chinese-speaking individuals. In the present study, preschool Chinese-speaking children with typical development and with autism were asked to generate stories from a set of wordless Cartoon pictures. Two groups were matched in chronological age and language developmental age. Their speech and gestures were coded. Compared to children with typical development, children with autism produced fewer gestures and showed lower gesture rate. Besides, children with autism produced fewer emblems and fewer supplementary gestures compared to their TD peers. Unlike children with typical development, children with autism tend to produce emblems for reinforcing, rather than supplementing information not conveyed in speech. Results showed the impairments in integrating the cross-modal semantic information in children with autism.

The impact of bilingualism on the narrative ability and the executive functions of children with autism spectrum disorders

While there is ample evidence that monolingual children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) face difficulties with narrative story-telling and executive functions (EF), there is considerable uncertainty about how bilingualism impacts these skills in autism. The current study explores the effect of bilingualism on the narrative and EF skills of forty 7-to-12-year-old bilingual and monolingual children with ASD, as well as forty age-matched bilingual and monolingual children of typical development (TD). Narrative production data were elicited using the Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument (ENNI; Schneider et al., 2005), which was developed to measure narrative production at a microstructural and macrostructural level. The same children were administered two EF tasks, namely, a global-local visual attention task and a 2-back working memory task. In story-telling, bilingual children with ASD achieved higher scores than monolingual children with ASD on story structure complexity and use of adverbial clauses, and they tended to use significantly fewer ambiguous referential forms than their monolingual peers with ASD. In the global-local task, bilingual children with ASD were faster and more accurate in global trials than monolingual children with ASD, who tended to be more susceptible to interference from locally presented information than the other experimental groups. Higher accuracy and faster response times were also observed for bilingual children with ASD in the 2-back task. Further correlation analyses between the story-telling and EF tasks revealed that bilingual children with ASD drew on a broader range of EF in narrative production than their monolingual peers. The overall findings reveal that bilingual children with ASD outperformed their monolingual peers with ASD in both the microstructure and macrostructure of their narrative production, as well as in their visual attention and working memory skills.

Production of mental state terms in narratives of Mandarin-speaking children with autism spectrum disorder

This study investigates the ability of Mandarin-speaking children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to use mental state terms in narratives. The narrative data are from 16 children with ASD and 16 typically developing children, matched on language and cognitive abilities. The narratives were elicited using Frog, where are you? Participants' use of lexical expressions referring to emotion, cognition, desire and perception was examined. The 'deer episode' of the story was chosen to analyse children's ability to talk about misrepresentation. The results reveal that the two groups of children performed comparably in basic narrative measures, overall use of mental state terms and references to the misrepresentation. The outcomes underscore the importance of examining different types of mental state terms separately. These findings are discussed in relation to linguistic and cognitive factors in mental-state attribution.