A Study On The Competence Of Chinese Autistic Children 's Narrative Tasks

This study was designed to investigate whether Chinese autistic children (CAC) possess an impairment in referential competence. We not only compare the referential choices (an indefinite referring expression vs. a definite referring expression) made during a narrative by autistic children and a well-matched typically developing control group, but also attempt reveal the potential causes for the impaired referential competence.We chosed the autistic children and the typically developing control children in the testes, and each group contained fifteen children. They were matched in age, verbal intelligence quotient (VIQ), performance intelligence quotient (PIQ) and total intelligence quotient (IQ). The autistic children and the typically developing control children were presented with a wordless picture book Frog where are you? then were asked to look at the pictures and tell the story. We analyse and compare the ability to introduce and retain references the character in the story, thereby undertaking thorough research and investigation into the use of references of autistic children.The results of this experiment on the introduction and retention of references clearly show:the ability of the autistic children to introduce and retain the appropriate references clearly lags behind the typically developing control group; only part of the referential competence is as well as the typically developing control group. In introducing characters, autistic children show many significant differences from typically developing control group, such as generating the indefinite expressions significantly less than typically developing children, omitting small or rarely seen roles in the story, excessive dependence on the overall mark indefinite form and double labeling indefinite form using underdeveloped.In retaining characters, autistic children are able to adjust the referential expressions according to the context of the story while rely on maintaining characters and the overall referential strategy. Autistic children show many significant differences from typically developing control group, such as over-reliance on the reintroducing characters and lack of maintaining characters, using a large number of indefinite expressions and generating many ambiguous pronouns.This study suggests that autistic children are impaired in referential competence comparison with the typically developing control group. The impaired referential competence is caused by factors related to the cognitive impairment and language skills injury in autistic children.