Once upon a time, in a land far far away (Australia to be exact) there were two researchers, Marleen Westerveld and Jaqueline Roberts, who set out to explore the magical land known as preschool. They wanted to investigate the narrative abilities of young children on the autism spectrum. Marleen, Jaqueline, and their fearless team ventured out (probably with lots of coffee and hand sanitizer) to work with 30 adorable little humans. The researchers presented the children with a story, asked them questions about it, and asked them to retell the story.
And so…. there were a number of findings (drum roll please!) 1) children performed better when answering fact-based questions than those requiring them to infer the emotions 2) out of the students who attempted to retell the story, on average, two out of ten critical events were included, and most generated stories that were descriptive or action sequences (based on Westby’s [2005] decision making tree) thus lacking “goal-directed behavior” 3) a number of students also demonstrated difficulties with speech production and grammar accuracy (perhaps due to the language demands placed on them during the narrative re-tell task). 4) performance on the narrative tasks related to performance on select formal language assessments (between semantic diversity/narrative comprehension and PPVT-fourth edition [illustrating the important role that vocabulary plays in narrative language], and between narrative comprehension and the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales – second edition [receptive communication competence]).
Why the heck is this important? For starters, their findings provide early developmental evidence of the idea that children on the spectrum have difficulty understanding others’ mental states/emotions and the notion that they tend to focus more on details rather than on the overall gestalt. Another major take-away is that stories continue to prove themselves as a great tool for the assessment and intervention of speech, receptive language, and expressive language for young children, even those on the spectrum. It has been well established that narrative abilities are linked to academic success and reading comprehension abilities, which is why narrative intervention is super important. Now that you have this info, beeline to your favorite stories, use them to see how your kiddos fare, and then establish your starting point for further support… just save Fifty Shades of Grey for yourself. 😉
Resources:
The Brains: Marleen F. Westerveld and Jacqueline M. A. Roberts
The full article: Westerveld, M.F., & Roberts, J. (2017) The Oral Narrative Comprehension and Production Abilities of Verbal Preschoolers on the Autism Spectrum. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 48, 260-272. http://lshss.pubs.asha.org/article.aspx?articleid=2655030&resultClick=3
Westby, C. E., (2005). Assessing and remediating text comprehension problems. In H.W. Catts & A.G. Kamhi (eds.), Language and reading disabilities (2nd ed., pp. 157-232). Boston, MA: Pearson Education.
Free narrative assessment tools:
https://earlychildhood.ehe.osu.edu/files/2016/04/NAP-Training-Manual.pdf
http://courses.washington.edu/sop/StorybuildingIntroduction.PDF
Therapeutic programs for narratives:
https://www.languagedynamicsgroup.com/products/story-champs-intervention/storychamps-about-old.html
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