Story-telling ability of five-year-old children with autism spectrum disorder

Otroci z avtistično motnjo imajo veliko skupnih značilnosti, hkrati pa so med njimi tudi velike razlike. Motnja se razlikuje glede pojavnosti in intenzivnosti, skupna pa so odstopanja v razvoju verbalne in neverbalne komunikacije. Pogosto se težave izražajo predvsem na pragmatični ravni jezika, ki predstavlja sposobnost primerne in učinkovite rabe jezika v socialnem kontekstu. Eden od pokazateljev razvitosti pragmatičnih govornih spretnosti otroka je pripovedovanje zgodbe. V magistrskem delu smo s pomočjo Preizkusa pripovedovanja zgodbe: Rokavička primerjali značilnosti pripovedovanja petletnih otrok z avtistično motnjo in pripovedovanja otrok s tipičnim razvojem. Preučevani skupini sta se statistično pomembno razlikovali na področju besed v zgodbi (število vseh besed, število različnih besed) in na nekaterih kazalnikih s področja slovnične strukture zgodbe (povprečna dolžina povedi, število priredno zloženih povedi in delež enostavčnih povedi). Razlike niso bile statistično pomembne na področju števila podrednih povedi, uporabe prirednih in podrednih veznikov ter pri vseh kazalnikih na področju vsebinske strukture zgodbe (število dogodkov, število zamenjav perspektive, število besed za opisovanje mentalnih stanj). Skupni dosežek pri Preizkusu pripovedovanja zgodbe: Rokavička je bil pri otrocih z avtistično motnjo statistično pomembno nižji kot pri njihovih vrstnikih s tipičnim razvojem. Ugotovili smo, da so vsaj nekateri otroci z avtistično motnjo sposobni tvoriti zgodbe, ki so primerljive zgodbam otrok s tipičnim razvojem, vendar pa v povprečju vseeno dosegajo nižje rezultate na večini kazalnikov za ocenjevanje zgodbe in jim je potrebno nuditi podporo in pomoč tako na slovničnem kot tudi pragmatičnem nivoju jezika.Children with autism spectrum disorder appear to have a lot of similar properties, yet at the same time exhibit vast differences between themselves. The autism spectrum disorder differs itself the most when it comes to its occurence and intensity, yet its common trait is deviation regarding verbal and non-verbal communication. More often than not this deviation is exhibited in the pragmatic aspect of the language, which represents the ability of using the language in a social context properly and efficiently. As an indicator of abilities of a child regarding the use of this aspect of language, the method of storytelling was chosen. In this work, we used a diagnostic test - “Preizkus prepovedovanja zgodbe: Rokavička” to compare the storytelling abilities of 5 year olds without the autism spectrum disorder and those 5 year olds with an autism spectrum disorder. The reviewed groups have shown statistically significant distinctions in several aspects of the story, such as sum of all words used and sum of different words used, as well as average sentence length, number of coordinate clauses and number of simple sentences. The differences were not statistically significant regarding the use of subordinate clauses, coordinate and subordinate conjunctions and all aspects of the content of the story, such as numner of events, perspective changes and number of words used for a mental state description. The overall achievement of children with autism spectrum disorder was statistically significantly lower compared to their peers with a typical development. Our findings suggest that at least some of the subjects with autistic spectrum disorder are able to constitute stories that are comparable to those of their typically developed peers, yet on average they achieve inferior results with most of the indicators used to evaluate their storytelling, therefore they should be given support both with the pragmatic and the grammatic aspect of the language