Narrative Thinking and Narrative Comprehension Deficit Disorder

Narrative thinking is the basic form of human understanding. It is a truism that people in all cultures use stories to define who they are and pass on their beliefs and values. But narrative thinking goes way beyond story-telling. We use narrative thinking every time we remember or plan an event or activity. We use it when we have a conversation or listen to the news.

Narrative thinking allows us to integrate many, many bits of factual information (who, what, where, when, how, why, to what effect), sensory input, and emotional response--to integrate all this into one coherent, meaningful whole. We do this all day long.

Without narrative thinking, our ability to organize all the infinite information, sights, sounds, sensations, and emotions that we encounter would be severely limited. We would probably tune most of it out--except what related to our basic needs.

Our friends on the low end of the autism spectrum are there because their ability to think narratively is severely impaired. They cannot effectively integrate all the information around them into a coherent, meaningful story. They have even more trouble taking a coherent, meaningful story that someone else has composed and recreating that story in their own mind so that it means something to them. This is narrative comprehension deficit disorder.