Parental Mediation in the Improvement of Narrative Skills of High-Functioning Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) produce impoverished personal narratives. We developed an intervention to improve parental talk with their son/daughter with ASD which would thereby improve the child's narration. In this pilot study, we randomly assigned parents to an intervention group who received information about the importance of personal narratives and techniques for improving narration, or a wait-list control group. We compared changes in narration of those with ASD whose parents were in the intervention group versus the wait-list control group. Two recordings of parent-child conversations were scored for elaboration and topic-maintenance versus off-topic remarks. Elaboration skills showed significant improvement among intervention parents, which was related to child elaboration in the same conversation and several months later. Parents in the intervention group, but not control group, reported significant improvement in their son/daughter's narration. Narrative skills intervention with parents is a promising corrective to the narration difficulties of those with ASD.