Who Is Talking and about What ? Conversation about Personal Events in Autism

Background:  Through early conversations, children learn to enter into the narrative discourse about the past (Fivush & Nelson, 2004). Developmental approaches propose that mental development is an interactive product of the child in transaction with socio-cultural supports and practices. Differing communicative styles among parents and children are established in response to the parent’s view of the child’s ability to participate acively. Prior research on children with Autism Spectrum Disorders-ASD (Goldman, 2008) reported difficulties in narrative organization and lack of high-point (i.e., the climax). Here, we focus on the parents’ strategies to enter into the child’s discourse about past events. Autobiographical memory emerges from dialogues and negotiations supported by the shared minds, often lacking in children with ASD, which may disrupt their meaningful narrative involvement

Objectives: The aims are (i) to examine dyadic interactions during parent-child conversations about past events among three groups of children and (ii) to identify parents’ strategies to elicit autobiographical memories.

Methods: Parent-child conversations about autobiographical memories were recorded and transcribed for three groups of schoolage children: 11 high-functioning with ASD (HFA), 11 non-autistic with developmental language disorders (DLD), and 8 typically developing (TD) matched for chronological age and non-verbal IQ. The coding focuses on: (a) conversational transactions and (b) narrative productions. Conversations were coded for (1) number of turns taken by parent and child, (2) number of events initiated by parent and child, (3) parent’s probing strategy, and (4) child’s level of participation. Narrative productions were coded for (1) time of each event and (2) event topic.

Results:  Results showed no differences in number of turns taken by parent and child among the three groups. Analyses revealed that all parents initiated more events. Compared to HFA and DLD, TD children more often chose the topic. We identified different parent probing strategies, relative to diagnostic group, which tended to be associated with the child’s level of participation. HFA children remembered events from a more recent past while TD and DLD recalled older memories. No differences in event topic were found.

Conclusions: Analysis of parent-child conversations about past events provides an opportunity to better understand the dynamics within the dyads relative to the child’s social deficits. These results shed light onto parents’ and children’s differing roles. Parents of HFA and DLD children appeared to be concerned with their child’s performance as if it were part of a cognitive assessment. Specifically, parents of HFA children focused on the accuracy of their child’s responses and his/her overall performance, while TD dyads interacted in a more natural way. This might be related to the fact that HFA and DLD children do not practice past event conversations with their parents as often as TD children. Parents of ASD children naturally adjust their conversational style to their child’s communication difficulties.

We highlight the relationship between parents’ strategies to elicit memories and children’s ability to contribute meaningfully to the conversation. Strengthening meaningful dyadic narrative throughout childhood may enhance participation in personal remembering and a sense of self in time, place, and with others.