Attribution of subjective experience to geometric figures in narratives by autistic children and children with developmental language disorder

Abstract Narratives from autistic children, children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and typically developing children were compared for attributions of intentionality in descriptions of two animations, one inviting descriptions of social events like fighting, another one inviting descriptions of physical events like orbiting planets. The analysis was based on a semantic and syntactic classification of clauses in terms of whether the verbs require their arguments to refer to beings with subjective experience, that is, intentionality attribution as a first step in the understanding of others as beings with mental states and processes. The autistic children did not have difficulties attributing intentionality to geometric figures. Moreover, the children with DLD made more intentionality attributions in their descriptions of the physical animation than the typically developing peers. Both diagnostic groups reported fewer relevant events than the typically developing children, which is interpreted as difficulties with narrative macrostructure. The results are discussed in relation to earlier studies and with respect to what they tell us about intentionality attribution and narrative structure in autism.