Assessment of Personal Narrative Writing in Children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Check theory-of-mind first—kids who can't read minds write weaker personal stories.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Llanes et al. (2020) asked the kids to write a true story about their own life. Half had autism, half were neurotypical. All kids were 8-12 years old and spoke in full sentences.
The team scored every story for grammar, sentence variety, and overall quality. They also gave each child a quick theory-of-mind test to see if the child could guess what another person thinks or feels.
What they found
Kids with autism wrote shorter stories with more grammar mistakes. Their sentences were simpler and repeated the same words.
The lower a child scored on the mind-reading test, the weaker the story. Theory-of-mind scores predicted 42 % of the difference in writing quality between groups.
How this fits with other research
Baixauli et al. (2016) pooled 24 earlier studies and found the same gap in oral stories. The new paper shows the gap also shows up when kids write instead of speak.
Patton et al. (2020) gave 20 weeks of small-group language lessons to first-graders with autism. After the lessons, the kids told better oral stories. That trial gives hope that writing lessons could improve written stories too.
Kauschke et al. (2016) found that autistic girls used more feeling words than autistic boys, but both groups still trailed neurotypical peers. Llanes et al. (2020) now add that poor mind-reading, not gender, best predicts weak written stories.
Why it matters
Before you teach story writing, run a quick false-belief or emotion-inference task. If the child fails, start with mind-reading drills, visual supports, or sentence frames. These supports may lift both social and writing goals in one shot.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Research has demonstrated that writing may be challenging for many children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD; Mayes & Calhoun, 2006). In our study, we used linguistic analysis to identify and examine the personal narrative writing skills of children with ASD in comparison to neurotypical (NT) children. METHOD: This study included 22 children with ASD and 22 NT children. Groups did not differ in terms of age, IQ, and language. Writing samples were coded and compared for aspects of microstructure (e.g., lexical and syntactic complexity, errors) and macrostructure (e.g., quality, or ratings of coherence, structure, and content). We also examined the link between theory of mind (ToM) and personal narrative writing. Of interest was whether ToM uniquely predicted writing performance after controlling for diagnostic group, chronological age, and language ability. RESULTS: The texts of children with ASD were less syntactically diverse, contained more grammatical errors, and were reduced in overall quality compared to NT children. However, children with ASD did not differ from NT children in terms of lexical complexity, frequency of writing conventions errors, and use of evaluative devices. Overall, ToM uniquely predicted syntactic complexity and text quality in children. CONCLUSIONS: Study findings showed that children with ASD demonstrate some challenges with personal narrative writing compared to NT children. Additionally, difficulty with narrative writing was linked to poorer ToM performance, particularly in children with ASD. Findings highlight the utility of obtaining a variety of writing outcomes, as well as mechanisms related to writing, when evaluating writing for educational decisions.
Research in autism spectrum disorders, 2020 · doi:10.1177/13623