Date of Award
2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Emily L. Coderre
Abstract
Understanding the structure, or narrative arc, of a story is critical for narrative comprehension, whether a narrative is presented verbally (e.g., written or spoken stories) or pictorially (e.g., comics). Previous work finds that autistic adults show reduced sensitivity to narrative structure in comics, which could help explain oft-reported differences in narrative comprehension by autistic individuals. Here, we extend that work to explore structural processing in written and pictorial narratives and compare between modalities. In an electroencephalography (EEG) study with autistic and non-autistic adults, we manipulated the presence of narrative grammar in comics and written stories. “Structural Only” narratives contained narrative structure but no comprehensible meaning. These were created by shuffling sentences (in written narratives) or comic panels (in visual narratives) across stories but maintaining their relative positions. “Scrambled” narratives were created by shuffling sentences/panels across stories and positions, thus eliminating both structure and meaning. Neural responsiveness to narrative structure was examined by subtracting Structural Only ERP amplitudes from Scrambled amplitudes and comparing the resulting difference wave across levels of autistic traits as measured by the Autism Quotient (AQ) questionnaire. Analyses showed effects of level of autistic traits in both modalities, with higher AQ participants exhibiting more negative amplitudes across conditions compared to low AQ participants. In response to both written and visual narratives, analyses revealed positive correlations between AQ and Scrambled – Structural Only difference wave amplitudes. This association indicates that, with higher AQ scores, the amplitudes of the difference waves became less negative, indicating differential sensitivity to and processing of narrative grammar with higher levels of autistic traits. These findings suggest that autistic traits affect the processing of narrative grammar regardless of modality, which could contribute to overall narrative comprehension differences in this population.
Language
en
Number of Pages
79 p.
Recommended Citation
D'Auria, Carolyn T., "Cross-Modal Examinations Of Narrative Structural Processing In Autism." (2024). Graduate College Dissertations and Theses. 1921.
https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis/1921