Narratives of Chinese kindergarteners with Autism spectrum disorder: Comparison with typically developing children

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is an early-onset neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by highly heterogeneous language abilities. These variations necessitate sensitive and comprehensive assessments, with narrative analysis being an effective method. This study aimed to examine the micro- and macrostructural aspects of narratives of Mandarin-speaking children with ASD. 19 children with ASD (mean age = 5.57 years; standard deviation [SD] = 1.09) and 19 age-matched typically developing (TD) children (mean age = 5.14 years; SD = 0.09) were enrolled in this study. The Narrative Assessment Protocol (NAP-2) was used to obtain the children's narrative samples. Children's wordless picture book-based narrations were analysed for story length (total number of words and utterances), linguistic abilities (mean length of utterances, mean length of the five longest utterances, number of different words, and vocabulary diversity), and NAP-2 scores (total scores, story grammar, storytelling convention, simple sentence structure, complex sentence structure, word and phrase). After applying Bonferroni's adjustment (α = 0.0042), no significant differences were observed in linguistic performance or story length between the two groups. However, children with ASD showed significantly lower total scores (t = 3.25, p = 0.002), story grammar scores (t = 3.17, p = 0.003), and storytelling convention scores (t = 3.04, p = 0.004). These findings suggest that young Chinese children with ASD may exhibit comparable microstructural narrative abilities but face significant challenges in macrostructural narrative skills, such as organising episodic structures. This underscores the need for targeted interventions to enhance the macro-narrative skills in this population.