بررسی ساختارهای خرد و کلان در داستان های دارای طرحواره فعال و بدون طرحواره فعال در کودکان فارسی زبان با اختلالِ طیفِ اُتیسم (مقاله علمی وزارت علوم)
درجه علمی: نشریه علمی (وزارت علوم)
آرشیو
چکیده
تولید داستان های منسجم و پیوسته برای کودکان با اختلال طیف اُتیسم موضوعی پرچالش است. با این وجود، تفاوت های بین داستان های روایت شده توسط کودکان با و بدون اختلالِ طیفِ اُتیسم ممکن است با کاهش نیازهای شناختی و زبانی کاهش پیدا کند. از این رو، پژوهش حاضر بر آن است تا مشخص کند که آیا استفاده از طرحواره فعال که داستان را حول رویدادهای مشترکی سازماندهی می کند، می تواند منجر به کاهش مشکلات کودکان در روایت داستان شود یا خیر. در راستای دستیابی به این هدف، توانایی 19 کودک با اختلال طیف اُتیسم و 26 کودک سالم در بازگویی دو داستان که یکی از آن ها دارای طرحواره فعال (طرحواره فعال سینما رفتن) و دیگری بدون طرحواره فعال بود، ارزیابی شد. داستان ها از نظر ساختارهای ریز و کلان و نوع رویدادهای دارای طرحواره فعال و بدون طرحواره فعال رمزگذاری شدند. یافته های پژوهش نشان داد که عملکرد کودکان با اختلالِ طیفِ اُتیسم در مقایسه با کودکان سالم به طور معنی داری هم در داستان دارای طرحواره فعال و هم در داستان بدون طرحواره فعال برحسب تولید ساختارهای ریز و ساختارهای کلان ضعیف تر بود. به طورکلی، داستان های روایت شده توسط کودکان با اختلالِ طیفِ اُتیسم در مقایسه با کودکان سالم انسجام و پیوستگی کمتری داشتند. مقیاس کامل ضریب هوشی تعیین کننده انسجام و پیوستگی داستان در کودکان با اختلالِ طیفِ اُتیسم بود. علاوه بر این، بررسی داستان دارای طرحواره فعال نشان داد که میزان استفاده از جزئیات مربوط به طرحواره فعال توسط کودکان با اختلالِ طیفِ اُتیسم مانند کودکان سالم بود. با این وجود، میزان استفاده از جزئیات بدون طرحواره فعال در کودکان با اختلالِ طیفِ اُتیسم در مقایسه با کودکان سالم کمتر بود. نتایج پژوهش نشان می دهد آسیب در روایت داستان ممکن است در انواع داستان ها وجود داشته باشد.Micro- and Macro-Structures in the Retold Narratives with Script and Non-Script: The Case of Persian-Speaking Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
Abstract
Producing cohesive and coherent stories by children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a challenging issue. However, the differences between the stories retold by children with and without ASD may decrease by reducing cognitive and linguistic needs. The present study intended to determine whether the use of scripts that organize stories around shared events can lead to a decrease in children’s problems of narrative retelling. To achieve this goal, the abilities of 19 children with ASD and 26 healthy children in retelling two stories with and without a script were evaluated. The stories were coded in terms of micro- and macro-structures and types of events with and without a script. The findings showed that the performance of the ASD children compared to the healthy ones was significantly weaker in retelling the stories with and without the script in terms of micro- and macro-structures. In general, the stories retold by the children with ASD compared to the healthy children were less cohesive and coherent. The full-scale IQ determined cohesion and coherence of the story retold by the ASD children. In addition, the study of the story with the script showed that the amount of details related to the script performed by children with ASD was comparable to that of the healthy children. However, the use of details without the script by the ASD children compared to the healthy ones was higher. The results of the research revealed that impairment in story narration might be present across narrative types.
Keywords: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), monolingual children, story retelling, script
Introduction
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impairments in the areas of social communication and restrictive or repetitive behaviors (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). As narrative production is an essential component of social communication, it is not surprising that the past research has found that children with ASD are at particular risk for difficulties with narrative discourse (Stirling, Douglas, Leekham, & Carey, 2014). However, in contrast to our extensive knowledge regarding narrative development in neurotypical (NT) children, narrative production in ASD children has remained a relatively understudied area of research, especially as it relates to the extent that these impairments are pervasive across narrative measures or genres and the mechanisms contributing to these problems. Thus, the current study was designed to gain a more comprehensive understanding of narrative development in children with ASD by examining whether providing more structures in the form of a script framework within a narrative task could facilitate well-formed narratives to be retold by ASD children.
Materials and Methods
The statistical population of this research included ASD children and healthy children aged 6-12 from Tehran. In general, from among both groups of children (with ASD and normal linguistic growth), 54 children participated in this study. The ASD sample included 19 children from speech therapy clinics of Tehran, who were selected based on some predefined criteria. To select the ASD children, first, 20 children with clinical diagnosis of ASD were identified; however, one of the children was excluded due to inability of speech. The final sample included 17 male and 2 female subjects. The average age of children with ASD was 10 years and 3 months and the mean age of those with normal language development was 9 years and 8 months. The ASD children, who had an IQ score of higher than 70 and were monolingual, were allowed to participate in the study. The average IQ scores of the children with ASD and those with normal language development were 93/5 and 102, respectively. Therefore, there was a significant difference between these two groups of children in terms of intelligence. The clinical diagnoses of all the children with ASD were established via medical evaluation by a pediatrician and/or a licensed clinical psychologist in accordance with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV (APA, 2000). ASD symptom severity was determined by using the Childhood Autism Rating Scale, 2 nd Edition (CARS-2) (Schopler & Van Bourgondien, 2010), and the Social Responsiveness Scale, 2 nd Edition (SRS-2) (Constantino and Gruber, 2012). The children with normal language growth were selected from the public schools of Tehran. The final sample consisted of 26 healthy children (18 boys and 8 girls) with a mean age of 9 years and 9 months and an age range of 6/11-12/11. The groups were matched on non-verbal reasoning and receptive vocabulary. Two different retelling tasks were administered: the stories of “Peter and the Cat” (a non-script-based story) and “A Day at the Movies” (a script-based story). During retelling the stories, the examiner narrated them by showing the pictures of each story. Then, he gave the children the picture story books and asked them to retell their stories in the best way. Afterwards, 2 trained researchers transcribed all the recordings. The transcription reliabilities between the two coders were 0.87 and 0.88 for the mentioned stories, respectively. The following micro-structure measures were generated: productivity (number of total words), lexical diversity (number of different words), and grammatical complexity (Mean Length of Utterance (MLU)). Using the manual of the first story (Leitao & Allan, 2003), each narrative was additionally coded for the 5 micro-structure components of vocabulary, connectors, references, adverbials, and story register and 2 macro-structure components of structure and content. Then, additional composite scores were created: overall narrative coherence (structure + content) and cohesion (connectors + references + adverbials). Finally, to gain a better understanding of the children’s knowledge of script events, the script-based story was coded for inclusion of the script and non-script details.
Discussion of Results and Conclusions
The results of this research revealed evidence of the prevalence of story-related impairments in children with ASD and showed that this group of children faced many problems in telling not only fictional stories, but also script-based stories. In line with Capps et al. (2000) and king et al. (2014), the script-based and non-script-based stories narrated by the ASD children compared to their normal peers had lower syntactic and semantic complexities (Novogrodsky, 2013; Norbury & Bishop, 2003 and Suh et al., 2014). Also, there were higher probabilities of shorter utterances, inappropriate use or referential expressions to mark characters, use of simple temporal connectors (e.g., then and later) instead of causal connectors (e.g., since) to link events, and use of a narrower range of phrases to help to maintain the listener’s bias throughout the story by the ASD children compared to those with normal language development. In contrast, productivity and lexical diversity were the relative strengths of the children with ASD. The underlying internal script framework in the script-based story did not appear to support the children’s abilities to tell a more coherent and cohesive script-based narrative. Instead, a number of narrative impairments seemed to be persistent across the story type. Analysis of the type of information the children included during retelling of the script-based story indicated that the ASD children were on par with their NT peers with regard to recalling the essential script elements. This finding corroborated the previous work suggesting that high-functioning children with ASD have an adequate understanding of the core elements of familiar events (Trillingsgaard, 1999 and Loth et al., 2008). Our results suggested that, at least in the context of narrative recall, ASD children are able to utilize script knowledge in the same way as their healthy peers. The present results demonstrated that impairments in narrative coherence and cohesion were present across the script and non-script narratives in the ASD children even during performing the tasks. Our findings also provided a better understanding of script or event-schema knowledge in ASD children. Furthermore, the current study confirmed the importance of considering FSIQ and receptive language when studying the narrative abilities of children with ASD. The present research highlighted the need for narrative interventions that can specifically encourage clarity of pronouns and use of connectors and adverbials and overtly teach story coherence across different narrative genres. Thus, developing interventions to support the narrative abilities and event knowledge of children with ASD may have widespread consequences.
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