Narrative Intervention for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Clinical Psychology
• Speech-Language Pathology

Background:

• Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often experience challenges in narrative production.
• Developing effective interventions to improve storytelling in children with ASD is crucial for their communication and social development.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effectiveness of a narrative intervention program focused on mental state and causal language for children with ASD.
• To determine if the intervention leads to improvements in narrative complexity, structure, and specific language use.

Main Methods:

• A multiple-baseline across-participants design was employed over a 6-month period.
• Five children diagnosed with ASD (ages 8-12) received 21-33 individual intervention sessions.
• Spontaneous stories were analyzed weekly for story complexity, structure, and use of mental state and causal language.

Main Results:

• All five children demonstrated gains in all three narrative measures following the intervention.
• Four out of five children showed changes in trend, indicating sustained improvement.
• Narrative improvements were maintained even after the intervention ceased.

Conclusions:

• The 3-phase narrative instruction program is effective in enhancing fictional narration abilities in children with ASD.
• The findings support the use of targeted language interventions to improve narrative skills in this population.