JUMPING AROUND AND LEAVING THINGS OUT: A PROFILE OF THE NARRATIVES ABILITIES OF CHILDREN WITH SPECIFIC LANGUAGE IMPAIRMENT MIRANDA, A., MCCABE, A., AND BLISS, L. (1998) APPLIED PSYCHOLINGUISTICS 19, 4, 647-667.

Presented by: Inbal Cohen Department of English, Bar-Ilan

UniversityJan 2011

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Research Objectives

The study investigates the discourse coherence of school-

aged children with SLI.

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The approach

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The study describes impaired narration by employing a comprehensive multidimensional approach.

The advantage of this approach is that enables a variety of discourse dimensions to be assessed in one narrative.

Five dimensions of discourse are analyzed: topic maintenance, event sequencing, explicitness (including referencing), conjunctive cohesion, and fluency

Measures of narrative analysis

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1. Topic maintenance 1. Topic maintenance Reflects the extent to which a theme or topic is

maintained in a narrative. Children with SLI do not always use thematic

discourse when constructing stories. They expand their narrative attempts by

adding information outside of a narrative topic, information that is irrelevant or associative (Merrit & Liles, 1987).

Nonthematic discourse may be the result of the tacit demands of producing a narrative of a reasonable length.

2. Event sequencing Involves the ordering of actions in a chronological

or other wise logical manner. Children with SLI have difficulty in marking the

temporal order of events.

3. Explicitness Relates to the presentation of sufficient, accurate

information necessary to understand a narrative. In contrast, implicitness refers to omitted or puzzling information.

The narratives of children with SLI are often too implicit. They omit crucial information about plans, actions and internal states.

because of limited awareness of the communicative needs of the listener. 5

4. Conjunctive cohesion Refers to the semantic or pragmatic devices that link

utterances. Children with SLI have difficulty using conjunctions in

order to link utterances. Make more errors in the semantic uses of conjunctions than do children with NL.

Due to lack of comprehension of the logical relationship between events, or limited ability to organize information.

The pragmatic use of conjunctions by children with SLI has not been examined prior to the present project.

5. Fluency Refers to how smoothly discourse is produced. Children with SLI frequently exhibit dysfluent discourse

long past the age of 5 or 6 years (unlike NL). Due to word finding deficit and a reduced ability to plan

and monitor.

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Research question

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Do the personal narratives of the children with SLI differ from those of two groups of children with NL, one matched on age and the other matched on language maturity, with respect to the five dimensions of discourse coherence?

Method

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Subjects Subjects (3 groups)(3 groups) 10 boys diagnosed as having SLI. Age 8;0 to 9;9

with mean of 8;7. Enrolled in a classroom for children with SLI.

2 control groups: NCA- 10 boys matched with the experimental group

by chronological age. Age 8;0 to 9;11 with mean of 8;7.

NLA- 10 boys matched with the experimental group by language level as determined by the Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn) . Age 5;0 to 6;0 with mean of 5;3.

Language measures:

The IPSyn was used to assess the morphosyntactic abilities of all the children. Points were awarded for the occurrence of specific grammatical forms.

Lexical diversity and mean length of clause were also calculated for each child.

Children in the SLI and NLA groups scored lower than those in the NCA group.

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Narrative elicitation procedure:

The Conversational Map procedure was used to elicit personal narratives (McCabe&Rollons, 1994).

5 verbal prompts were presented consisting a description of an event such as going to a birthday party or having a vacation. Then the following question was posed: Did anything like that happen to you? The child is then asked to describe the event : What happened? Or Tell me about it. Finally, other subprompts were used (anything else? Or and then what happened?) to encourage narration while not specifically influencing the content of the child’s narrative.

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Data transcription and coding:

The samples were audiotaped and transcribed. Reviewed for accuracy by 2 independent judges. First, the data were segmented using the clause

as the unit of analysis to compute the language analysis measures for IPSyn, lexical diversity and mean length of clause. Second, the data were segmented using the proposition as the unit of analysis; both explicit and implicit propositions were identified.

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Reliability for each of the 5 measures was assessed:

1. Topic maintenance: Thematic and nonthematic narrative propositions were identified.

2. Event sequencing: ordered (chronological sequence of propositions) and disordered (leap-frogging narrative) discourse patterns were identified.

3. Explicitness: assessed by coding the narratives for two types of propositions: explicit and implicit.

4. Conjunctive cohesion: analyzed by identifying semantic, pragmatic and error usage of conjunctions.

5. Fluency: analyzed with respect to the overall frequency of dysfluencies.

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Data analysis:

Total frequency values were calculated for each variable.

For some variables, ratio measures were also obtained. The ratio were calculated by dividing the frequency of each variable by the number of explicit propositions- enabled each relevant measure to be considered proportionally.

Determined whether there were differences among the three groups of children for each dependent variable.

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ResultsDimensionResults

1. Topic maintenance:

Thematic narrative propositions:

SLI < NCA SLI ~=NLA

Nonthematic propositions

SLI > NCASLI > NLA

2. Event sequencing:

Ordered- single narrative discourse

SLI ~=NCASLI < NLA

Ordered- multiple narrative discourse

SLI < NCA SLI ~=NLA

Disordered- leap frogging narrative patterns

SLI > NCASLI > NLA

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ResultsDimensionResults

3. Explicitness:

Explicit thematic narrative proposition:

SLI< NCA

Implicit propositions:

SLI > NCASLI > NLA

4. Conjunctive cohesion

Overall conjunctive usage:

SLI < NCA

Semantic usage:

SLI > NLA

Pragmatic usage

SLI < NCA

5. Fluency

Frequency of dysfluencies:

SLI ~=NCASLI ~=NLA

Ratio of dysfluencies:

SLI > NCA

Discussion: SLI expanded their narratives by adding

nonthematic discourse, something that neither control group did.

Children with SLI also formed fewer thematic propositions than their chronological peers.

Children with SLI engaged in leap frogging narratives unlike either control groups.

Higher frequencies and ratios of implicit propositions were found in the narratives of SLI in comparison to both control groups. (due to impairments of word retrieval and complex sentence production)

Children with SLI produced more connectives than the children with NLA but less than the NCA group- this discourse dimension is a relative strength.

SLI children have relatively more dysfluencies than do non-impaired children in narration. (difficulties in planning and monitoring)

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Consideration of 5 dimensions of narrative discourse of children with SLI revealed systematic weaknesses and strengths.

Children with SLI cannot adequately organize a coherent narrative due to the demands required by this genre (hierarchical organization, temporal and causal relationships, etc.)

Children with SLI place a considerable burden on their listeners.

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Clinical implications and conclusion:

The overall dimensions assessed here provide a profile of narrative discourse abilities. Relative strengths and weakness are identified.

A comprehensive view of narration can be achieved both for children grouped by diagnoses and for individual children.

The speech language pathologist will need to focus on a range of discourse abilities in order to increase the coherence of children with SLI and thus, to relieve the burden such children place on their listeners.

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