Oral narrative discourse in schoolchildren with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The families were mostly of high socioeconomic status with mothers who had completed higher education, and the authors deliberately excluded children with autism from poorer, less educated backgrounds with less access to therapy. The results therefore say nothing about children with autism growing up in those circumstances. The sample was one of convenience: approximately 50 families at one clinic were invited and 26 agreed, so the children who took part may not represent children with autism more generally. Each group had only 26 children. Every child in the autism group was already in speech-language-hearing therapy, psychotherapy or occupational therapy at the time of assessment, and all had a therapy history, which may have supported their storytelling. The study cannot separate how much of the performance reflects therapy. The story was read aloud with no pictures, which is the opposite of how most earlier studies elicit narratives and requires working memory, sustained attention and discourse organisation without visual support. That may have made the task harder, particularly for the autism group, and it limits direct comparison with other studies. No child in the study had intellectual disability, so the findings do not carry over to children with autism who also have a cognitive impairment. The study is cross-sectional, so it can describe a difference between groups but cannot show what causes it.

The paper declares no financial support and states that there is nothing to declare for conflicts of interest. The declaration is printed in English and in Portuguese.

Do not read this as evidence that narrative skills are intact in autism. On total retelling and comprehension the groups were similar, but only 7 of 26 children with autism reached adequate performance for the essential information in the partial retelling, against 16 of 26 typically developing children. Every child with autism here had average or above-average reasoning, none had intellectual disability, all were already in speech-language-hearing therapy, psychotherapy or occupational therapy, and all came from higher-income, well-educated families. Those conditions are what this result belongs to, not autism on its own.