Investigating Coherence in Narrative Discourse of Monolingual Farsi-speaking Children with High-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder

The aim of the present study is to investigate the ability of monolingual Farsi-speaking children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder in the narration of story. To this aim, 18 monolingual Farsi-speaking male student with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (with a mean age of 8 years and 2 months) and 18 normal monolingual Farsi-speaking male students (with a mean age of 7 years and 3 months) were selected. The students were matched on their cognitive and language abilities. Both groups were encouraged to narrate stories based on a picture story book. Their coherence was investigated on the basis of length of the story, variety of words, causal sentences, and causal networks. Findings did not indicate a statistical significant difference between the two groups in the basic narrative measures and in overtly causal sentences (p<0.05). The results of the study showed that the stories narrated by high-functioning autism spectrum disorder group were less causally connected and less coherent. However, this difference was not statistically significant. On the whole, it can be concluded that causal network model is an alternative way for investigating narrative coherence by examining how narrative information is interconnected at a deeper level.