ABSTRACT
Narratives from three studies differing in subject pools, elicitation procedures, and story content were analyzed using seven variables hypothesized to measure a variety of language abilities used in narrative production. Two questions were addressed: (a) To what extent did multiple variables represent common factors? and (b) To what extent did these variables distinguish children with language disorder from their nondisordered peers? Results indicated that: (a) The seven variables represented two factors; Factor I measured global organization of content (i.e., episode structure), and Factor II measured within- and across-sentence structure (i.e., grammatical sentence structure, within subordinate clause productivity, and textual cohesion), and (b) regardless of study, only the variables representing Factor II were selected as the most effective in predicting group membership.
Subject(s)
Child Language , Language Disorders/diagnosis , Language Tests , Verbal Behavior , Child , Humans , Linguistics , Speech Production MeasurementABSTRACT
Narratives were produced by groups of language-disordered and nonimpaired children ages 9:0-11:4 (years:months) in story generation and story retelling tasks. The stories were analyzed in terms of the number of story grammar components, number of complete episodes, relative frequency of story components, and story length. For both groups of children, the results indicated strong overall homogeneity between story generation and story retelling. The retold narratives were longer and contained more story grammar components and complete episode structures for both groups of children. Clause length within complete episodes differentiated story generation from story retelling for the language-disordered children but not for the control group. The clinical advantages of using story retelling in language assessment are discussed.
Subject(s)
Language Disorders/diagnosis , Language Tests/methods , Child , Female , Humans , Language Disorders/psychology , Linguistics , Male , MemoryABSTRACT
Twenty language-impaired and unimpaired children ages 9:0 to 11:4 participated in three story tasks. The children generated three original stories, retold two adventure stories, and then answered two sets of comprehension questions after each retelling. Stein and Glenn's (1979) story grammar rules were adapted and used to analyze the narratives. The generated and retold stories produced by the language-disordered children contained fewer complete story episodes, a lower mean number of main and subordinate clauses per complete episode, and a lower frequency of use of story grammar components than those of the control group. The story hierarchies produced by both groups were highly similar, though, in both story generation and story retelling. The groups also did not differ in their understanding of the factual details of the retold stories, but did differ significantly in their comprehension of the relationships linking the critical parts of the stories together. The results are discussed relative to cognitive organizational deficits of language-impaired children.