Narrative Identity Alterations in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Life Story Approach

Abstract Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by an alteration of the sense of self, particularly self-continuity. While former studies focused on the recollection and narrative of single past events, the present study aimed to explore autistic individuals’ narrative identity by assessing for the first time their life story, described as the most integrated form of personal narrative and the closest to the self. A comparison of the narrative coherence of autistic individuals’ life stories (n = 22) with those of nonautistic participants (n = 22) revealed that global coherence, particularly causal-motivational coherence, was lower in the life narratives of autistic individuals. Additionally, typical narrative beginnings at birth and elaborated endings were less frequent in autistic individuals. In comparison with the nonautistic group, the ASD group included personal events in their life narratives that were self-rated as more negative and associated with negative feelings at retrieval, along with having lower life impacts. The present study provides evidence for an impaired narrative identity in ASD. We discussed how this effect could be related to a lower narrative coherence and an impaired temporal framework, possibly associated with a lack of others’ perspective-taking.