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The Relationship between Narrative Proficiency and Syntactic Complexity of Story Retells Elicited from Children with ASD Spectrum Disorders (ASD)

Megan Israelsen and Sandra Laing Gillam

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the syntactic complexity of story retells of 5 children ranging in age from 8-12 with ASD Spectrum Disorder before, during and after narrative intervention.

Method: Children participated in narrative intervention for 45 minutes, twice weekly for a period of time ranging from 19 to 33 sessions.

Results: Results indicated that during baseline when children were not receiving instruction, their story retells contained more simple sentences than complex sentences. The use of complex sentences was observed to increase as children became more proficient in their narrative production skills.

Discussion: Students generally improved on narrative discourse skills as a result of participating in the narrative intervention. The implications for clinicians working with students with ASD are compelling and suggest that narrative intervention may be associated with the additional benefit of improved complex sentence use.