Comparing narrative storytelling ability in individuals with autism and fetal alcohol spectrum disorders.
Linh N H Pham, Adrian Kc Lee, Annette Estes and 4 others
PMID 37850612WHAT IT FOUND
Adolescents and adults with autism or FASD told stories comparable in length and structure to neurotypical peers.
However, both groups spoke significantly slower, and those with autism used more filler words like 'um' or 'uh'.
Key findings
01Participants with autism and FASD had a significantly slower rate of speech compared to the comparison group, but did not differ from each other.
02The autism group produced significantly more mazes (filler words, repetitions) per total words than both the FASD and comparison groups.
03There were no significant group differences in the overall quality of the narrative (NSS total score), story length, or mean length of utterance.
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 (11 in each clinical group), which limits the generalisability of the findings. Only one narrative task (a wordless picture book) was used, so results may not reflect performance in other conversational or storytelling contexts. The FASD group consisted mostly of individuals with milder diagnoses (ND/AE), so findings may not apply to those with more severe FASD profiles. Group-level analysis masked significant individual variability; some participants in clinical groups performed very differently from the group mean.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest. The study was supported by grants from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that normal narrative coherence scores indicate a lack of communication difficulty. The study found that while story structure was comparable to controls, speech rate was significantly slower and disfluencies were higher in the autism group, suggesting underlying processing differences that standard narrative metrics might miss.