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Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of an individualized, systematic language intervention on the personal narratives of children with autism.
Method: A single-subject, multiple-baseline design across participants and behaviors was used to examine the effect of the intervention on language features of personal narratives. Three 6- to 8-year-old boys with autism participated in 12 individual intervention sessions that targeted 2-3 story grammar elements (e.g., problem, plan) and 3-4 linguistic complexity elements (e.g., causal subordination, adverbs) selected from each participant's baseline performance. Intervention involved repeated retellings of customized model narratives and the generation of personal narratives with a systematic reduction of visual and verbal scaffolding. Independent personal narratives generated at the end of each baseline, intervention, and maintenance session were analyzed for presence and sophistication of targeted features.
Results: Graphical and statistical results showed immediate improvement in targeted language features as a function of intervention. There was mixed evidence of maintenance 2 and 7 weeks after intervention.
Conclusion: Children with autism can benefit from an individualized, systematic intervention targeting specific narrative language features. Greater intensity of intervention may be needed to gain enduring effects for some language features.
Key Words: autism, intervention, language, school-based services, language disorders, efficacy, children
Narration, the telling of real or imaginary past events, involves many language, cognitive, and social skills. Narrative competence is an important part of success at home and school. Children with autism, even those with high levels of function, are likely to have difficulties handling the complex linguistic and psychological landscape of narration. This is the first study to investigate the effect of a systematic, individualized narrative intervention on story grammar and linguistic complexity of the personal narratives of children with high-functioning autism.
The Linguistic and Psychological Landscape of Narration
Narrative is the verbal recapitulation of past experiences or the telling of what happened (Labov, 1972;Moffett, 1968). Narratives encompass much of our daily discourse-such as reporting on, evaluating, and regulating activities (A.McCabe, 1991)-and are part of our ways of conceptualizing the world (Bruner, 1986; Nelson, 1991). Narratives reflect emotional and psychological underpinnings of human interactions, providing an account not only of what happens to people, the "landscape of action," but also what those involved in the action (and those telling it) know,...