“Once upon a time there was a frog and he said frog where are you”: Ambiguous Pronoun Use in the Narratives of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)

In the current study, storytelling and story
retelling by children with ASD were analyzed to
explore ambiguous pronoun use in narratives.
Twenty-three children diagnosed with ASD aged
6;1-14;3 and 17 typically-developing (TD)
children aged 5;11-14;4 participated in the study.
In the retelling task, no significant difference
between the groups was found, suggesting that
children with ASD can use good repetition skills
to produce pronouns appropriately. In the
storytelling task, children with ASD produced
more ambiguous pronouns than did the TD
children. Moreover the ambiguous pronoun
production of older children with ASD was
similar to that of younger TD children,
suggesting a delay in the developmental
trajectory of pronoun use of children with ASD.
The findings support a model in which
children with ASD show deficits in the
pragmatic domain of producing narratives