an investigation of oral narratives in children with high ... · macrostructure: children with hfa...
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E L E N I B A L D I M T S I 1, E L E N I P E R I S T E R I 1, & I A N T H I T S I M P L I 1 , 2
1A R I S T O T L E U N I V E R S I T Y O F T H E S S A L O N I K I ,2U N I V E R S I T Y O F R E A D I N G , U K
An investigation of oral narratives in
children with High Functioning
Autism: aspects of microstructure and
macrostructure
13th International Congress for the Study of Child
Language, 14-18 July 2014
Aims
to compare the narrative performance of children
with High Functioning Autism (HFA) to that of
typically-developing (TD) children in terms of
referential cohesion and global narrative coherence
to examine whether lexical and syntactic abilities
correlate with cohesion and coherence in narrative
discourse
HFA
Individuals with HFA belong to the autism spectrum
with no learning disability (Frith, 2004)
Basic language functioning (phonology, syntax) is
age-appropriate while higher level linguistic abilities
(e.g. use of language in context, pragmatic
inferencing, intentionality) are inappropriate (Joliffe
& Baron-Cohen, 2000; Tager- Flusberg, Paul & Lord,
2005)
Verbal and non-verbal IQ ≥85
Narratives as linguistic and cognitive markers
of development
Linguistic development: reference, coordination,
subordination, temporal anchoring
Cognitive (and pragmatic) development:
constructing the episode(s) and building a mental
model of the narrative(Johnson-Laird, 1983; Bower & Morrow, 1990; Arnold, Benetto &Diehl, 2008)
Central coherence - Theory of Mind
A. Referential cohesion
The development of narrative ability is related to the development of character reference: Introduction, Maintenance, Shift (Reintroduction) (Hickman et al 1995; 1996;
Hickman & Hendriks, 1999)
Reference use in autism
Underspecification: Children with autism overused pronouns and
zero-pronouns where full DPs should have been used in shift
contexts ((Norbury & Bishop, 2003; Norbury et al., 2013;Tager- Flusberg, 1995)
Overspecification: children with autism overused full DPs
expressions instead of pronouns in maintenance (Baltaxe, 1977;
Colle, Baron- Cohen, Wheelwright & Van der Lely, 2008; Arnold et al., 2009)
Why?
A. Memory problems (maintaining activation in cases of overload)
B. Taking the listener’s perspective into account (ToM)
B. Global narrative coherence
holistic organization of discourse,
use of causal explanatory frameworks to integrate
narrated events in meaningful ways,
and referential cohesion(Hogan-Brown, Losh, Martin, &. Mueffelmann, 2013 )
Individuals with autism tend to use fewer
evaluatives (i.e. characters’ thoughts & emotions),
fewer causal networks and more irrelevant,
inappropriate utterances while narrating a story (Norbury et al., 2013; Diehl et al., 2006)
20 Greek-speaking children diagnosed with HFA (1
girl, age range: 7;0-12;6, Mean: 9;4 yrs., SD: 1.8)
Diagnostic criteria:
Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R; Lord,
Rutter, & Le Couteur, 1994)
clinical assessment of the child’s social-adaptive
functioning by a child psychiatrist
20 typically-developing (TD) Greek-speaking
children (1 girl, age range: 7;0-12;5, Mean: 9;4 yrs.,
SD: 1.78)
I. The study - Participants
- Morpho-Syntactic Comprehension (Diagnostic
Verbal IQ (DVIQ); Stavrakaki & Tsimpli, 1999)
Greek Expressive Vocabulary task (Vogindroukas,
Protopapas, & Sideridis, 2009; adaptation from Renfrew
Word Finding test, 1995).
II. The study –Methodology
Screening tasks
Results (WISC-III, DVIQ, Vocabulary), Means (SD)Groups WISC
(general IQ index)
DVIQ score Expressive
Vocabulary
(max. score: 50)
TD control
Children 120.6
Mean verbal IQ: 120.65 (16.4)
Mean performance IQ: 115.7
(15.4)
17.1 (3.9) 45.1 (3.7)
MEVA: 11;7
Children with
HFA
103.9
*Mean verbal IQ: 103.8 (17.3)
**Mean performance IQ: 103.2
(15.4)
15.0 (3.8) 42.4 (5.0)
MEVA: 10;7
*verbal IQ index: 9 children with HFA scored sign. lower
(p<.05) than the mean of the control children
**performance IQ index: 7 children with HFA scored sign.
lower (p<.05) than the mean of the control children
(Singlims_ES software; Crawford et al., 2003)
II. The story
Wordless storybook: ‘Harry the dirty dog’ (Zion, 1956)
Telling: all pictures were presented initially and then
page by page in a book form; the experimenter was
watching
Retelling: the child listens to the story through
headphones; the experimenter was sitting opposite
the child without looking at the book; the child had to
retell the story looking at the pictures again
“Harry the dirty dog” picture-story
II. a.Microstructure
Lexical Diversity of Internal State terms (emotions, beliefs,
attitudes, … expressed through different categories)
Syntactic Complexity Index (Hunt, 1970): No of subordinated sentences
for every c-unit
II.b. Macrostructure
-No of Episodes
-Setting
-Closing events: statements that indicate goal attainment/ failure of the
protagonists actions
-Accuracy: theme & point of the story
-Causal connectivity: the average number of connections between
propositions
Causal Networks (Trabasso & Sperry, 1985)
In text cause-and-effect connections between events or linguistic
units create a network of information.
This network identifies the causal chain, the events that create the
gist of the story (Trabasso & Sperry, 1985)
.
Causal Networks (Trabasso & Sperry, 1985)
Causal connections in the story “Harry the dirtydog” between 5 events:
1.Harry was a white dog with black spots
2. who liked everything, except… getting a (2)bath.
3. So one day when he heard the water running in the tab, (3)
4.he took the scrubbing brush… and buried it in the backyard
5.Then he ran away from home.
Results
I. Frequencies of use of referential forms in
telling and retelling in Maintenance
4,3
14,2
93,95
85
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
TD children HFA children
Lex. NPs
Pronoun
14,89 13,81
87,4484,74
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
TD children HFA children
Lex. DPs
Pronouns
Telling Retelling
- Pronouns > Lex. DPs in both telling and retelling (p<.05) for both groups
- No significant between-group differences in either telling or retelling
I. Frequencies of use of referential forms in
telling and retelling in Reintroduction
17
8,1
47,83
42,4
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
TD children HFA children
Lex. DPs
Pronouns47,54 47,78
43,33
35,55
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
TD children HFA children
Lex. DPs
Pronouns
Telling Retelling
- Pronouns > Lex. DPs in telling only (p<.05) for both groups
- Non significant between-group differences in both modes
- Lex. DPs sign. higher in retelling (p<.010) for both groups (retelling effect)
II. Narrative length and
Lexical Diversity of IST
Telling Retelling
- TD children: higher rates for both C-units and lexical diversity in retelling (p<.005)
- Children with HFA: higher rates for lexical diversity in retelling (p=.013)
- Significant between-group differences in both C-units and Lexical Diversity in
Retelling
(TD children > children with HFA)
III. Microstructure:
Syntactic Complexity Index
1,291,23
0
0,2
0,4
0,6
0,8
1
1,2
1,4
1,6
1,8
2
TD children HFA children
Syntactic Complexity Index
SyntacticComplexity
Index
1,491,41
0
0,2
0,4
0,6
0,8
1
1,2
1,4
1,6
1,8
2
TD children HFA children
Syntactic Complexity Index
SyntacticComplexity
Index
Telling Retelling
- TD children: higher Syntactic Complexity Index in Retelling
(p=.013)
- n.s. between-group differences
IV. Macrostructure measures
Telling Retelling
- TD children: narrative mode effect; higher rates for Settings in Retelling (p=.025)
- Children with HFA: narrative mode effect; higher rates for No of Episodes (p=.034) and
No of Peripheral Events (p=.046) in Retelling.
- Telling: TD > children with HFA in Causal Connectivity, Accuracy, No of Episodes and
Peripheral Events
- Retelling: TD > children with HFA in all 5 categories
Syntactic Complexity Index and causal connectivity
• HFA children
Syntactic Comprehension (DVIQ) was positively correlated with the Syntactic Complexity index in retelling (F(1, 19)=4.003, p=.051, r=.182).
Expressive Vocab was positively correlated with Causal connectivity in the telling condition (F(1, 19)=4.113, p=.058, r=.186).
Summary
Referential Cohesion: no significant between-group
differences in the use of appropriate referential forms per
referential function
Microstructure: children with HFA produced shorter
narratives and less lexical diversity in the use of internal
state terms
Macrostructure: children with HFA had less structured causal
networks than the TD children-->story structure and
coherence were problematic for the children with autism
Narrative mode effects: retelling had more marked effects
on TD children than children with HFA in terms of number of
C-units, Syntactic Complexity and Settings as part of causal
networks
Remaining questions
To what extent can differences in language ability in children with
HFA vs. TD account for problems in encoding macrostructure?
Many thanks to the children participating in the study and their parents
And thank you for your attention!
Selected References
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual ofmental disorders (5th ed.). Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing.
Arnold, J.E., Bennetto, L.,& Diehl, J.J.(2009).Reference production in youngspeakers with and without autism: Effects of discourse status and processing constraints.Cognition, 110, 131–146.
Baltaxe, C.A.M.,&D’Angiola, N.(1992). Cohesion in the discourse interaction ofautistic, specifically language-impaired, and normal children. Journal of Autism andDevelopmental Disorders,22, 1–21.
Bamberg,M.,&Damrad Frye,R.(1991).On the ability to provide evaluativecomments: Further explorations of children’s narrative competencies. Journal of ChildLanguage,18,689–710.
Baron-Cohen, S.(1995).Mindblindness: An essay on autism and theory of mind.Cambridge, UK: The MIT Press.
Diehl, J. J., Bennetto, L., & Young, E. (2006). Story recall and narrative coherenceof high-functioning children with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Abnormal ChildPsychology, 34(1), 87–102.
Selected References (ctd.)
Hunt, K. W. (1970). Recent measures in syntactic development. In M. Lester (ed.)
Reading in applied transformational grammar (179-192). Nueva York: Holt, Rinehart and Wiston.
Frith, U. (2003). Autism: Explaining the enigma. Oxford: Blackwell.
Joliffe, T., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2000). Linguistic processing in high-functioningadults with autism or Asperger syndrome: Can global coherence be achieved? A further testof central coherence theory. Psychological Medicine, 30, 1169- 1187.
Norbury, C.F., Gemmel,T., &Paul, R.(2013). Pragmatic abilities in narrative production:across-disorder comparison. Journal of Child Language Advance online publication.
Stavrakaki, S. & Τsimpli, I. M. (2000). Diagnostic verbal IQ test for school andpreschool children: Standardization, statistical analysis, and psychometric properties.Proceedings of the 8thconference of the Panhellenic Association of Speech and LanguageTherapists (pp. 95-106). Athens: Ellinika Grammata.
Schuh, J. M., & Eigsti, I. M. (2012) .Working Memory, Language Skills, andAutism Symptomatology. Behavioral Sciences, 2 (4), 207-218.
Trabasso, T., & Sperry, L. L. (1985). Causal relatedness and importance of story events. Journal of Memory and Language, 24, 595–611.
Vogindroukas, I., Protopapas, A. X., & Sideridis, G. (2009). Greek version of the
Word Finding Vocabulary Test (Renfrew, 1995). Athens: Glauki.
Peripheral events of the story
1.Harry was a white dog with black spots
2. who liked everything, except… getting a bath. Setting
1st. Harry is avoiding the bath
2nd. Harry’s adventure w/ sub- episodes
3rd. Harry’s trouble back home
4rth. Finding the brush No of episodes
5fth. Towards the bath tub
6th. Taking a bath
7th. Bach home
1. Harry’s bath was the soapiest one he’d ever had. It worked like magic.
As soon as the children started to scrub, they began shouting, “Mummy! Daddy! Closing
Look ! Come quick! It’s Harry! It’s Harry! It’s Harry!” they cried. events
2. Harry wagged his tail and was very, very happy.
3. It was wonderful to be home
Accuracy
“Harry the dirty dog” story is that it is about a white dog
with black spots who loves everything , except baths.
So one day before bath time, Harry runs away. THEME
He plays outside all day long, digging and sliding
in everything from garden soil to pavement tar.
By the time he returns home, Harry is so dirty he looks like
a black dog with white spots. His family doesn't even
recognize him!
Of all things, Harry has to ask for a bath and when finally
gets it POINT
then his family recognizes him.