AJSLP
HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS
QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced]


     

American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology Vol.17 194-206 May 2008. doi:10.1044/1058-0360(2008/019)
© American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow My Folders
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow reprints & permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by McCabe, A.
Right arrow Articles by Bennett, M.
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by McCabe, A.
Right arrow Articles by Bennett, M.

Research

Comparison of Personal Versus Fictional Narratives of Children With Language Impairment

Allyssa McCabe
University of Massachusetts, Lowell

Lynn Bliss
University of Houston, Houston, TX

Gabriela Barra
MariBeth Bennett
University of Massachusetts, Lowell

Contact author: Allyssa McCabe, Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts Lowell, 870 Broadway Street, Suite 1, Lowell, MA 01854. E-mail: allyssa_mccabe{at}uml.edu.

Purpose: Personal narratives are common in children's conversations, recommended as the appropriate genre for early writing by educators, and part of many high-stakes tests, possibly because they tend to be better formed than fictional narratives. However, current practice in the field of speech-language pathology employs fictional narratives in assessment, intervention, and study of children with impaired language development. This article explored performance on personal versus fictional narratives by children with language impairment (LI), hypothesizing that performance on the former would be better and a minimal relationship between performances in the 2 genres.

Method: Twenty-seven children age 7;0–9;9 (years;months) with LI orally produced personal and fictional narratives (responses to a wordless picture book). Narratives were analyzed by raters blind to experimental hypotheses using high-point analysis and an analysis derived from scoring of a high-stakes composition for 4th grade.

Results: High-point ratings of personal significantly exceeded those of fictional narratives. Disproportionate fictional stories did not meet minimal narrative criteria. However, more personal narratives than would be expected by chance did. The analyses were significantly correlated. Quality of a child's performance of personal was minimally related to that of fictional narratives.

Conclusions: Clinicians may want to consider functional aspects of personal narratives.

Key Words: children, language disorders, assessment, narrative






HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS
All ASHA Journals AJA AJSLP JSLHR LSHSS
Copyright © 2008 by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.