Analysis of Noun Phrase Ambiguity in Narratives Reveals Differences in Referential Establishment But Not Cohesion for Older Autistic Children.
Emily Zane, Ruth B Grossman
PMID 37451051WHAT IT FOUND
Autistic adolescents were not more ambiguous than peers overall, but used more definite nouns and names before introducing characters.
This suggests the difficulty is not tracking who is who, but assuming the listener already knows the referent.
Key findings
01Autistic participants did not produce significantly more ambiguous references overall compared to non-autistic peers.
02A larger proportion of referential terms produced by the autistic group were coded as yielding never-introduced ambiguity compared to the non-autistic group.
03Autistic participants tended to use definite NPs or proper names to introduce characters, showing a pattern of being overspecific rather than underspecific.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample size was small (33 participants) and restricted to those with typical language and IQ scores, so findings may not generalize to autistic individuals with intellectual or language disabilities. The study did not measure executive functioning or perspective-taking directly, so the underlying cognitive causes of the ambiguity patterns are inferred rather than proven. Listeners did not ask for clarification or signal confusion, which might have affected how participants repaired their narratives in real-world contexts.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest. The study was supported by an NIH grant.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that autistic adolescents have difficulty maintaining referential cohesion or tracking characters. The study found no difference in competing-referents ambiguity, indicating they track established characters as well as their peers. The specific deficit is in the initial introduction of referents to a naive listener.