Lynn S. Bliss

Narrative skills following traumatic brain injury in children and adults

Personal narratives serve an important function in virtually all societies (Peterson & McCabe, 1991). Through narratives individuals make sense of their experiences and represent themselves to others (Bruner, 1990). The ability to produce narratives has been linked to academic success (Feagans, 1982). Persons who have sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI) are at risk for impaired narrative ability (Dennis, 1991). However, a paucity of information exists on the discourse abilities of persons with TBI. This is partly due to a lack of reliable tools with which to assess narrative discourse. The present study utilized dependency analysis (Deese, 1984) to document and describe the narrative discourse impairments of children and adults with TBI. Ten children (mean age 12;0) and 10 adults (mean age 35;2) were compared with matched controls. Dependency analysis reliably differentiated the discourse of the individuals with TBI from their controls. Individuals with TBI were significantly more dysfluent than their matched controls. Furthermore, their performance on the narrative task revealed a striking listener burden.

Narrative assessment profile: Discourse analysis for school-age children

The assessment of narrative skills of school-age children is described using a comprehensive discourse analysis approach, the Narrative Assessment Profile. The following dimensions of narration are evaluated: topic maintenance, event sequencing, explicitness, referencing, conjunctive cohesion, and fluency. The purpose of this article is to describe the development of these six dimensions and their symptoms in impaired narrative discourse. Assessment and intervention guidelines are presented.

Jumping around and leaving things out: A profile of the narrative abilities of children with specific language impairment

This article investigates the discourse coherence of school-aged children with specific language impairment (SLI). The following dimensions of discourse are analyzed: topic maintenance, event sequencing, explicitness (including referencing), conjunctive cohesion, and fluency. The personal narratives of the children in the experimental group were compared with those produced by two groups of children with normal language development, one group matched by chronological age and the other matched by language level. The narratives of the children with SLI were significantly impaired compared with both control groups with respect to all five dimensions of narration, although impairment was far more pronounced for topic maintenance, event sequencing, and implicitness than it was for conjunctive cohesion or fluency. The former serious impairments place a heavy burden on listeners. Theoretical and clinical implications of the results are discussed.

Modal usage by preschool children

Abstract Spontaneous language samples of 18 children in each age level of 2, 3, 4, and 5 years were analyzed for number of modals, semantic concepts, and first, second, and third person usage. The results revealed that the 2-year-old children used significantly fewer modals than the older children. No differences were found among the children in the remaining age levels. Ability and intention as well as first person forms were expressed most frequently. The implications of these results from an applied psychological perspective are discussed.

NARRATIVES FROM SPANISH-SPEAKING CHILDREN WITH IMPAIRED AND TYPICAL LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT*

The personal narratives of Spanish-speaking children with typical and impaired language development were compared across several narrative features. Thirty-nine eight- to eleven-year-old children produced narratives in English and in Spanish. Children with typical language development produced longer narratives in both English and in Spanish than children with impaired development. Narratives in Spanish produced by children with typical language development contained more actions and orientation than those produced by the children with language impairment. Significant correlations between the English and Spanish narratives were obtained for number of utterances, orientations, and actions. Bilingual aspects of narration and clinical applications are presented.

Selected syntactic usage of language- impaired children

The syntactic performance of ten language-impaired and ten normal children, matched by mean length of utterance was compared. Language samples were analyzed with respect to grammatical marker need index (GMN), grammatical marker error index (GME), and GMEs for nouns (GME-N), verbs (GME-V), bound (GME-B), and unbound (GME-U) forms. The distribution of syntactic errors for nine syntactic categories was also explored. There was no significance between the groups for GMN; significant between-group differences were found for GME, GME-N versus GME-V, and GME-B versus GME-U. For all children, noun-related forms elicited fewer errors than verb-related forms; no differences were found between bound and unbound elements. The distribution of errors for the syntactic categories revealed that significant differences were not found between the groups. More errors were made with articles than pronouns and with contractible auxiliaries than contractible copulas. The results are discussed in terms of the nature of the syntactic impairments in language-impaired children and clinical implications.

Screening kit of language development: A preschool language screening instrument☆

The Screening Kit of Language Development ( SKOLD ) was designed to meet the following criteria: Validity for 2.5-4 year old children, standardization for speakers of standard and Black English, and appropriateness for paraprofessional screeners . This paper describes the development, content, administration, scoring, reliability, and validity of SKOLD .

A comparison of verbal communicative skills of language impaired and normal speaking children

This investigation compared the speech act usage of language impaired and normal speaking children. Twenty language impaired subjects (LI) in stages III and IV constituted the experimental group. One control group consisted of 20 normal speaking younger children (NSY) equated with the language impaired subjects by MLU. The other control group consisted of 20 older normal speaking children (NSO) equated with the experimental group by chronological age. Two observers independently identified ten speech acts used by the subjects during free play sessions with a peer. The results indicated that the same speech acts were used in similar proportions by all three groups. The NSO used more utterances than the LI and NSY subjects. The NSO used describing and acknowledging speech acts more than the LI or NSY. Answering was used more frequently by the LI than the NSO. Requesting an action was used more frequently by the NSY than the NSO. The results suggest that language impaired subjects are able to use a variety of speech acts but that they appear to be delayed in their pragmatic development. Clinical implications of the data are presented.

Concurrent validity of two language screening tests

The importance of ascertaining the validity of clinical instruments used to make decisions about individuals is discussed and the need for additional validation studies is emphasized. Steps that can be taken to confirm the validity for a particular application, setting, or population are described. As an example, the concurrent validity of two language screening instruments, the Fluharty Preschool Screening Test and the Northwestern Syntax Screening Test, and their subtests was examined. Decisions from these screening tests and subtests were compared to a validity criterion of passing or failing the Sequenced Inventory of Communication Development for 182 white middle-class children, ages 36-47 months. The results showed that the screening tests differed in their validity, depending upon the content of the test and each subtest. The consequences of using either screening test are explored, to illustrate how the outcomes of such studies should be interpreted.

Maternal verbal responsiveness with language-impaired, stage-matched, and age-matched normal children

Abstract The verbal responsiveness of mothers of language-impaired (Ll) children was compared to mothers of two groups of normal children: stage-matched and age-matched. The interactions between the mothers and their children were coded using Schachters (1979) analysis. Mothers of the Ll children were generally less responsive to their childrens utterances than the mothers in the control groups. The mothers of the Ll children also revealed an increased level of ignoring and topic shifting of their childrens utterances. Explanations for these differences included parent-based and child-based reasons. The implications of the results are discussed from an applied developmental perpective.