Brief report: Conveying subjective experience in conversation: production of mental state terms and personal narratives in individuals with high functioning autism.

Bang et al. (2013) compared high-functioning autistic youth to language-matched peers. They recorded everyday conversations and counted personal stories and mental-state words like "think," "feel," and "want."

The team wanted to see if verbal teens with autism share inner life as often as peers do.

Autistic teens told fewer personal stories. When they did tell one, they used mental-state words less often.

Even with strong vocabulary scores, the gap stayed. Language skill alone did not fix the difference.

Tavassoli et al. (2012) found the same pattern in memory stories. Together, the two studies show the deficit holds in both memory talk and live chat.

Wehman et al. (1989) showed autistic teens also score lower on emotion-word comprehension. The new finding extends that gap into real conversation.

Taub et al. (1994) review notes that autistic people rarely self-report mood. The low use of mental-state terms in Janet’s data lines up with that clinical picture.

If a client can label feelings on a card but stays quiet about his own day, do not assume mastery. Build storytelling into goals: start with photo cues, model "I thought... I felt...," and reinforce each personal sentence. More stories now can lead to better friendships later.