Review articleNarratives of children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder: A meta-analysis
Section snippets
What this paper adds?
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This is the first meta-analysis about narrative abilities in children with ASD/HFA (Autism Spectrum Disorders/High Functioning Autism).
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The results revealed that individuals with ASD/HFA showed deficits in all narrative domains (macrostructure, microstructure, and internal state language) compared to controls.
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Findings did not differ in subgroups based on age and narrative type, but for internal state language, differences were greater in magnitude in the high verbal IQ group.
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Narrative, a way of
Eligibility criteria for the studies
The articles to be included in the meta-analysis had to meet the following inclusion criteria:
1)They were published in refereed journals; 2) The participants were children or adolescents with an ASD diagnosis (according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), International Classification of Diseases (ICD), the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) (Lord, Rutter, DiLavore, & Risi, 2001) and/or the Revised Autism Diagnostic Interview (ADI-R) (Rutter, LeCouteur,
Statistical analysis
Data extraction from the narrative indicators was independently performed, cross-checked by two of the authors, and entered into RevMan 5.3. To achieve consistency with other meta-analyses and provide a robust estimation of the effects, the different narrative domains were analyzed only if there were data from at least 5 studies.
Effect sizes (Standardized mean difference) were computed to represent the differences in narrative language between the ASD and control groups. Because a large
Discussion
The purpose of this meta-analysis was to more closely examine the narrative abilities of children and adolescents with ASD through the analysis of different indicators of their performance on narrative expression: narrative microstructure and macrostructure and ISL.
This meta-analysis revealed that, in general, individuals with ASD demonstrate lower narrative performance than children and adolescents with TD. They experience significant difficulties on all the variables evaluated, although with
Conclusion
In summary, this comprehensive review and meta-analysis made it possible to draw a general profile of narrative abilities that can contribute to the endophenotypic characterization of ASD and the establishment of intervention objectives in this area. Narrative is a vulnerable domain in children and adolescents with ASD, and it is a particularly useful instrument due to the limitations of standardized tests, such as lack of sensitivity (Botting, 2010). Based on the results of our study, their
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
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2023, Research in Autism Spectrum DisordersMentalizing and narrative coherence in autistic adults: Cerebellar sequencing and prediction
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2023, Research in Autism Spectrum DisordersCitation Excerpt :In short, good narrative communication requires that events be pieced together in a meaningful way so that individuals may convey a particular point of view for the benefit of the listener, thereby requiring that the storyteller both holds information about their intended message and adjusts language to fit their listener’s needs. So far, a clear picture of narrative language use by ASD individuals has been elusive (see Baixauli et al., 2016 and Stirling et al., 2014 for reviews). Regarding the length and complexity of narrative, several studies have reported that narratives of ASD children are shorter and less syntactically complex than neurotypical (NT) children (Capps et al., 2000; Carlsson et al., 2020; King et al., 2013; Peristeri et al., 2017; Thurber & Tager-Flusberg, 1993).
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Articles included in the meta-analysis.