Who's Who? Memory updating and character reference in children's narratives

The use of referring expressions in Mandarin-speaking children with and without developmental language disorder

This study investigated the use of referring expressions in Mandarin-speaking children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD). The data consist of narratives elicited from 18 children with DLD and 18 typically-developing (TD) children matched on chronological age. Participants' referring expressions were analysed in terms of referential form, function, and adequacy. The overall results of form - function mappings showed that the two groups of children were quite similar in their referential choices, indicating that both groups were sensitive to function constraints and listener needs. On the other hand, children with DLD were less successful than TD children in producing adequate subsequent mentions, suggesting that referential adequacy would be useful for identifying areas of difficulty children with DLD would have in referencing.

Executive Function and Narrative Language Abilities in Emergent Bilingual Preschoolers: An Exploratory Study

PURPOSE

In light of the importance of preschool oral narrative skills as precursors to literacy, this exploratory study examined expressive language skills among emergent bilingual Latine preschoolers using a naturalistic personal narrative task. To understand the factors that support language use in the personal narrative context for this population, we examined the contribution of children's executive function (EF) skills to their narrative language abilities.

METHOD

Children completed two subtests from the Preschool Self-Regulation Assessment to measure EF and produced two personal narratives in response to conversational prompts. A series of linear regressions were used to evaluate the relation between children's EF skills and their narrative production ability, narrative organization, and expressive language skills derived from automated analyses of narrative samples.

RESULTS

EF was found to predict children's ability to produce a personal narrative but not the language skills children demonstrated in these narratives.

CONCLUSIONS

The current findings suggest that EF is implicated in emergent bilingual Latine children's narrative abilities. At the preschool age, the contribution of EF to narrative language production is apparent in the global task of producing a narrative, rather than in the organizational or linguistic features of the narrative. As such, supporting both EF and narrative skills might be an important means of facilitating preliteracy among bilingual children.

Narrative Production in Mandarin-Speaking Children: Effects of Language Ability and Elicitation Method

Purpose We compared the narrative production in Mandarin-speaking children at risk (AR) for developmental language disorder (DLD) and typically developing (TD) controls to address two goals: (a) further our understanding of the Mandarin DLD phenotype and (b) examine the role of elicitation method in differentiating AR from TD. Method Twenty-one AR children and 21 age- and nonverbal IQ-matched peers produced two stories from the Multilingual Assessment Instrument of Narrative, first following an adult model (i.e., story-retell) and then without a model (i.e., story-tell). Group and task effects were analyzed on macrostructure and microstructure measures. Results For general macrostructure score and sentence complexity, children in the AR group performed more poorly than TD children on the more challenging story-tell task and showed decreased scores from retell to tell tasks. In addition, children in the AR group showed poorer performance on number of different words. Productivity and grammaticality measures did not show group differences. Discussion Consistent with previous findings, grammaticality and productivity were relatively preserved but story macrostructure, lexical diversity, and sentence complexity were vulnerable in Mandarin-speaking children with or AR for DLD. Having an adult model benefited both groups in sentence complexity and story macrostructure and potentially helped maintain the performance in TD children as they engaged in the more challenging story-telling task.

The Relationship between Executive Functions and Language Production in 5-6-Year-Old Children: Insights from Working Memory and Storytelling

This study examined the relationship between working memory capacity and narrative abilities in 5–6-year-old children. 269 children were assessed on their visual and verbal working memory and performed in a story retelling and a story creation (based on a single picture and on a series of pictures) tasks. The stories were evaluated on their macrostructure and microstructure. The results revealed a significant relationship between both components (verbal and visual) of working memory and the global indicators of a story’s macrostructure—such as semantic completeness, semantic adequacy, programming and narrative structure—and with the indicators of a story’s microstructure, such as grammatical accuracy and number of syntagmas. Yet, this relationship was systematically stronger for verbal working memory, as compared to visual working memory, suggesting that a well-developed verbal working memory leads to lexically and grammatically more accurate language production in preschool children.

Referential Cohesion in the Narratives of Bilingual and Monolingual Children With Typically Developing Language and With Specific Language Impairment

Purpose The study explores referential cohesion in the narratives of bilingual preschool children with typical language development (TLD) and with specific language impairment (SLI). Referential cohesion requires integration of multiple discourse factors and is expected to pose a challenge for children with bilingual SLI due to weak proficiency in both languages. Method Narratives were elicited from 45 bilinguals speaking Russian as the home language (L1) and Hebrew as the societal language (L2; 15 with SLI), 20 Hebrew-speaking monolinguals (10 with SLI), and 20 Russian-speaking monolinguals (10 with SLI) using a story retelling procedure. Bilinguals were tested in both languages. Analyses examined the effect of impairment (SLI vs. TLD) in bilinguals and monolinguals. Language effects were examined in cross-language comparisons of bilinguals (L1 vs. L2) and in differences between monolingual groups (Russian vs. Hebrew speakers) for the use of referential expressions. Results Bilingual children with SLI used a higher proportion of pronouns for character introduction and had fewer pronouns, which have been described as "adequate" ( Colozzo & Whitely, 2014 ) than bilingual children with TLD. No language effect emerged for bilinguals, who performed similarly in their L1 and L2, but a significant cross-linguistic difference emerged in the monolingual data: Russian-speaking children mainly used nouns to introduce and maintain characters, whereas Hebrew-speaking children mainly used pronouns for introduction and maintenance of characters. Conclusion The difficulty of children with SLI in creating a referential connection between a pronoun and a noun phrase is discussed in light of the interaction of local and global processes in narratives, which is shown to be weaker in children with SLI.

Desempenho de falantes do português brasileiro no “Test of Narrative Language (TNL)”

RESUMO Objetivo Investigar o desempenho de falantes do português brasileiro no Test of Narrative Language e correlacionar o desempenho nas tarefas de produção e compreensão da narrativa. Método Participaram 140 indivíduos, entre 5 e 11 anos e 11 meses de idade com desenvolvimento típico de linguagem, divididos de acordo com a faixa etária. Resultados Diferença significativa foi encontrada entre o grupo de 5 anos e todos os demais grupos etários, bem como para o grupo de 6 anos quando comparado ao grupo de 8, 9, 10 e 11 anos. O grupo de 7 anos não diferiu estatisticamente dos grupos de 6 e 8 anos. Metade do grupo de 7 anos cursava o primeiro ano e a outra metade, o segundo ano, o que pode ter contribuído para a não diferenciação do grupo com as faixas etárias fronteiriças. Não foi encontrada diferença estatisticamente significante entre os grupos a partir dos 8 anos. Observou-se correlação positiva entre o desempenho de compreensão e produção nos grupos etários de 5, 6 e 7 anos, o que não ocorreu para os demais grupos. Conclusão O teste diferenciou as faixas etárias de 5, 6 e 7 anos, o que não ocorreu nas faixas etárias a partir dos 8 anos. Também, a partir dos 8 anos, não foi encontrada correlação entre a produção e a compreensão narrativa, sinalizando o domínio de ambas as habilidades a partir desta faixa etária.

Wait…What??? Guiding Intervention Principles for Students With Verbal Working Memory Limitations

Purpose

The purpose of this clinical focus article is to present 5 guiding principles for the development of interventions for children with limited verbal working memory abilities.

Method

Summarizing and synthesizing previously reported theories and empirical data, we present a framework intended to guide working memory interventions.

Results

Existing research and theory support a comprehensive, multidimensional treatment model that considers the knowledge and abilities of the student and the language-learning demands they face in the various contexts of a school day.

Conclusion

The clinical framework for which we are advocating is one that embodies the characteristics of complex interventions—those made up of many individual components that work synchronously in conjunction with each other.

Pragmatic competence of children with autism spectrum disorder. Impact of theory of mind, verbal working memory, ADHD symptoms, and structural language

The primary aim of this study is to increase the existing knowledge about the pragmatic skills of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Specifically, the study has two objectives. The first is to provide a profile of characteristics based on The Children's Communication Checklist (CCC-2) pragmatics scales (inappropriate initiation, stereotyped language, use of context, nonverbal communication, and general pragmatics) and narrative task indicators. To this end, children with ASD will be compared to children with typical development (TD), controlling the effects of sex and structural language (speech, syntax, semantics, coherence). The second objective is to analyze whether theory of mind (ToM), verbal working memory, ADHD symptoms, and structural language can predict pragmatic competence in children with ASD without intellectual disability (ID). The results showed worse performance in the group with ASD on the majority of the pragmatic aspects evaluated. In addition, the application of ToM skills and structural language were significant predictors of the pragmatic skills of the children with ASD. These findings reinforce the importance of focusing intervention programs on mentalist abilities through experiences in real social scenarios, along with strengthening structural language components.

Narratives of children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder: A meta-analysis

BACKGROUND

The aim of this meta-analysis was to analyze the narrative performance of children and adolescents with high-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in terms of microstructure, macrostructure and internal state language.

METHOD

A systematic literature search yielded 24 studies that met the predetermined inclusion criteria. Effect sizes for each study were calculated for eight variables and analyzed using a random effects model. Intellectual ability, age and type of narrative were considered as potential moderators.

RESULTS

Results revealed that the children with ASD performed significantly worse than their peers on all the variables considered.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings are discussed taking into account the main explanatory psychological autism theories. Implications for intervention and orientations for future research are suggested.