Subject pronoun use by children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD)

In the current study, storytelling and story retelling by children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were analyzed to explore ambiguous third-person pronoun use in narratives. Twenty-three children diagnosed with ASD aged 6;1 to 14;3 and 17 typically-developing (TD) children aged 5;11 to 14;4 participated in the study. In the retelling task, no significant difference between the groups was found, suggesting that in less challenging tasks, children with ASD produce third-person subject pronouns appropriately. In the storytelling task, children with ASD produced more ambiguous third-person subject pronouns than did the TD children. The findings suggest a model in which children with ASD show deficits in the pragmatic domain of producing narratives.