American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology Vol.15 177-191 May 2006. doi:10.1044/1058-0360(2006/017)
© American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
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Research

The Index of Narrative Microstructure: A Clinical Tool for Analyzing School-Age Children's Narrative Performances

Laura M. Justice
Ryan P. Bowles
University of Virginia, Charlottesville

Joan N. Kaderavek
University of Toledo, Toledo, OH

Teresa A. Ukrainetz
University of Wyoming, Laramie

Sarita L. Eisenberg
Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ

Ronald B. Gillam
University of Texas at Austin

Contact author: Laura Justice, Preschool Language & Literacy Lab, Curry School of Education, Box 400873, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4273. Email: ljustice{at}virginia.edu

PURPOSE: This research was conducted to develop a clinical tool—the Index of Narrative Microstructure (INMIS)—that would parsimoniously account for important microstructural aspects of narrative production for school-age children. The study provides field test age- and grade-based INMIS values to aid clinicians in making normative judgments about microstructural aspects of pupils' narrative performance.

METHOD: Narrative samples using a single-picture elicitation context were collected from 250 children age 5–12 years and then transcribed and segmented into T-units. A T-unit consists of a single main clause and any dependent constituents. The narrative transcripts were then coded and analyzed to document a comprehensive set of microstructural indices.

RESULTS: Factor analysis indicated that narrative microstructure consisted of 2 moderately related factors. The Productivity factor primarily comprised measures of word output, lexical diversity, and T-unit output. The Complexity factor comprised measures of syntactic organization, with mean length of T-units in words and proportion of complex T-units loading most strongly. Principal components analysis was used to provide a linear combination of 8 variables to approximate the 2 factors. Formulas for calculating a student's performance on the 2 factors using 8 narrative measures are provided.

CONCLUSIONS: This study provided a method for professionals to calculate INMIS scores for narrative Productivity and Complexity for comparison against field test data for age (5- to 12-year-old) or grade (kindergarten to Grade 6) groupings. INMIS scores complement other tools in evaluating a child's narrative performance specifically and language abilities more generally.

Key Words: narrative development, narrative assessment, language assessment, school-age language


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