Narrative abilities of autistic and non-autistic adolescents: The role of mentalising and executive function.
Anna Harvey, Helen Spicer-Cain, Nicola Botting and 1 others
PMID 39560278WHAT IT FOUND
Adolescents with weaker mentalising skills produced less structured and coherent narratives, regardless of autism diagnosis.
Autistic adolescents scored lower on narrative structure, but diagnostic status did not predict narrative coherence once mentalising and language skills were accounted for.
Key findings
01Mentalising ability was the only significant predictor of narrative structure for both video tasks, while executive function measures were not.
02Mentalising ability significantly predicted narrative coherence for both videos, whereas diagnostic group did not predict coherence scores in the final models.
03Autistic adolescents scored significantly lower than non-autistic peers on narrative structure measures, but group differences were not found for narrative coherence after controlling for other variables.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample consisted of adolescents with low support needs and typical-range language/cognitive skills, so results may not apply to autistic people with intellectual disabilities or significant language disorders. The study had a gender imbalance, with fewer autistic girls recruited, which may limit generalisability given known differences in presentation. The novel '6Cs' coherence scoring framework only achieved moderate-to-good inter-rater reliability and requires further refinement. Participants were recruited from mainstream schools, which may have screened out adolescents with more pronounced executive function difficulties.
Declared interests
Funded by City, University of London. No other conflicts of interest declared.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that autistic adolescents struggle with narrative coherence specifically because of their diagnosis. The study found that mentalising ability, not diagnostic status, predicted coherence scores, meaning non-autistic adolescents with weaker mentalising skills showed similar difficulties.