A Cross-Sectional Study on Narrative Microstructure in Tamil-Speaking Autistic and Non-Autistic Children

Narrative skills involve retelling or generating stories, reflecting cognitive and communication development. This use of language is decontextualized and requires a fluent interplay of various components. Autistic children often demonstrate atypical language development and restricted communication tailored to specific needs. This cross-sectional study examines narrative microstructure in language-level-matched Tamil-speaking autistic children and those without autism, aged 3-5 years. Six microstructure parameters were analyzed through story-retelling and story-generation tasks to assess narrative abilities. The research included 38 Tamil-speaking children, divided based on autism diagnosis and matched for language level using standardized tests. The assessment focused on a retelling task and sequencing cards for story retelling (SR) and story generation (SG). The six microstructure variables evaluated were: total number of words (TNW), total number of utterances (TNU), mean length of utterances in words (MLU-W), mean length of utterances in morphemes (MLU-M), number of different words (NDW), and type-token ratio (TTR). The results indicated that autistic children consistently scored lower across all parameters, exhibiting difficulties with fluency and using shorter, simpler sentences. This study highlights the significance of narrative assessment in enhancing our understanding and support of language development in autistic children.