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The ability to produce a well-structured, coherent narrative account is essential for successful everyday communication. Research suggests that autistic people may find this challenging, and that narrative assessment can reveal pragmatic difficulties in this population that are missed on sentence-level tasks. Previous studies have used different methodologies to assess spoken narrative skills in autism. This review systematically examined these approaches and considered their utility for assessing narrative coherence.

Keyword database searches were conducted, with records screened by two independent reviewers. Eligible studies (n = 59) included specified frameworks for evaluating structure/coherence in spoken narrative accounts by autistic participants of any age. Studies were categorised according to the type of narrative scoring scheme used, and strengths and limitations were considered …