en Speech and Language Therapist Speech and Language Therapist Original Research Original Research <span style="font-size:13pt"><span style="text-justify:kashida"><span style="text-kashida:0%"><span style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif"><span style="font-style:italic"><b><span style="font-size:9.0pt"><span style="font-style:normal">Background: </span></span></b><span style="font-size:9.0pt"><span style="font-style:normal">Studies examining narrative production skills in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have demonstrated variable and inconsistent results. This study aimed to investigate to what extent narrative difficulties in children with ASD reflect difficulties with language. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br> <span style="font-size:13pt"><span style="text-justify:kashida"><span style="text-kashida:0%"><span style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif"><span style="font-style:italic"><span style="font-size:9.0pt"><span style="font-style:normal">&nbsp;&nbsp; <b>Methods:</b> Accordingly, the spoken narrative skills of 16 children with ASD were compared with those of their 16 chronological age-matched (CAM) and 16 language-matched (LM) peers. A Kruskal-Wallis non-parametric test was then used to examine the differences between groups in regard to NTC, NSG and SI variables .For other studied variables (NTW, number of T-units, ATL and total score), one-way analysis of variances (ANOVA) was also used.&nbsp; </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br> <span style="font-size:13pt"><span style="text-justify:kashida"><span style="text-kashida:0%"><span style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif"><span style="font-style:italic"><span style="font-size:9.0pt"><span style="font-style:normal">&nbsp;&nbsp; <b>Results:</b> At the level of microstructure, the results showed that productivity (number of total words, total clauses, and T-unites) and syntactic complexity (average of T-unit length and subordination index) were predominantly similar in ASD and LM children. However, children with ASD scored lower than their CAM counterparts (</span></span><span style="font-size:9.0pt">P</span><span style="font-size:9.0pt"><span style="font-style:normal"> < 0.001). At the macrostructure level, we found that the total score of story grammar elements and the number of story grammars in the narrative production of children with ASD were lower than those in both CAM and LM children (</span></span><span style="font-size:9.0pt">P</span><span style="font-size:9.0pt"><span style="font-style:normal"> < 0.001).</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br> <span style="font-size:13pt"><span style="text-justify:kashida"><span style="text-kashida:0%"><span style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif"><span style="font-style:italic"><span style="font-size:9.0pt"><span style="font-style:normal">&nbsp;&nbsp; <b>Conclusion:</b> The present study, thus, showed that creating a coherent narrative could be more demanding for children with ASD than productivity and syntactic complexity.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br> <br> <span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="line-height:150%"><span new="" roman="" style="font-family:" times=""><span dir="RTL" lang="FA" style="font-size:12.0pt"><span style="line-height:150%"></span></span></span></span></span> Autism Spectrum Disorder, Narration, Microstructure, Macrostructure, Child 929 937 http://mjiri.iums.ac.ir/browse.php?a_code=A-10-3370-3&slc_lang=en&sid=1 Mohyeddin Teimouri Sangani Teimori.slp@gmail.com 200319475328460080645 200319475328460080645 No Rehabilitation Research Center, Department of Speech Therapy, School of Rehabilitation Science, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran Noureddin Nakhostin Ansari nakhostin@tums.ac.ir 200319475328460080646 200319475328460080646 No Department of Physiotherapy, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran Zahra Soleymani soleymaniz@tums.ac.ir 200319475328460080647 200319475328460080647 No Department of Speech Therapy, School of Rehabilitation, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran Nahid Jalilevand jalilevand@gmail.com 200319475328460080648 200319475328460080648 No Rehabilitation Research Center, Department of Speech Therapy, School of Rehabilitation Science, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran Mitra Sohrabi mitrasohrabi90@yahoo.com 200319475328460080649 200319475328460080649 No Rehabilitation Research Center, Department of Speech Therapy, School of Rehabilitation Science, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran Reyhane Mohamadi mohamadi.r@iums.ac.ir 200319475328460080650 200319475328460080650 Yes Rehabilitation Research Center, Department of Speech Therapy, School of Rehabilitation Science, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran Katayoon Razjouyan Razjouk@gmail.com 200319475328460080651 200319475328460080651 No Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran