Narrative Analysis Flashcards
Narratives and language assessments
What type of rules are in a narratives ?
Narrative: Story told by the child; important part of assessment!
○ Uninterrupted sample of language that child/adolescent
provides/modifies to capture/hold listener’s attention
◉ Differences in narrative production and conversational production
○ Includes rules of cognitive organization
○ Rules of language sequencing (clear beginning, middle, end)
○ Story elements
◉ Different forms of narrative assessment (formal, informal)
◉ Importance of narrative skills at every age; different skill level
◉ Narratives: self-initiated, self-controlled, decontextualized form of
discourse
◉ Narratives: many genres: personal narratives/fictional narratives
most common
Narratives: Qualities (Owens, 2014)
◉ *Narration and conversation
Speaker maintains ?
Narratives are agent what ?
Narration and conversation–many qualities shared; many qualities
contrasted
○ Narratives: extended units of texts
○ Narratives: events organized/linked in a specific way==organized
in a temporally/causally predictable way (cohesive way, not in
conversation)
○ Narrative: Speaker maintains social monologue throughout
(mindful of information the listener needs)
○ Narrative: Agentive focus (agents: people, animals, imaginary
characters in events over time)
◉ Children with LI: narratives shorter (omit key information) and
disordered (confusing)–how can this effect them?
Narratives: Frameworks
◉ Narrative: expression of organization and inter-connection of data in the brain!
◉ 2 Frameworks: Scripts + Story Frames
○ Script: typical, predictable event sequence
■ Generalized; not about one particular experience
■ Each event represented; part of generalized event sequence (i.e. birthday
party)
○ Narrative Frame: models of story structures
■ Mental organizers; reduce processing demands
■ Help facilitate production/comprehension of narratives
◉ Children with LI: Narratives may break down due to:
○ Difficulties with linguistic difficulties
○ Problems with story script or story frame
◉ SLP: Needs to determine if child has story script or frame knowledge
○ Script knowledge: can use toys, pictures to determine familiarity
■ “Tell me what you do when X”/”Tell me what happened one time when X”
○ Frame knowldge: determine if child uses them in school/home, understands
frame
Collecting a Narrative
Variables that may affect the narrative form?
Type of elicitation
Naturalistic topics/contexts: Variables that may affect narrative form include
story type, child’s experience, task in which narrative told, topic of narrative,
formal/informal context, audiovisual support available etc.
◉ Oral & Narratives should be collected; more than one is helpful
◉ Type of Elicitation:
○ Books: descriptive information
○ Films: action sequences; more causal sequences in retelling than oral
stories
○ Pictures: provides support, but may constrain narrative (and this..)
■ Children with DS express more verbal content in narratives with
wordless picture books than may be expected from formal test
results
◉ SLP: needs to be certain the child has event/script knowledge & narrative frames
prior to collecting narrative/analyzing
Collecting a Narrative
◉ Minimal narrative
Minimal narrative: sequence of two temporally ordered clauses
◉ Structure! What is the structure inherent in the narrative you are
requesting?
○ SLP must think about stimulus structure–how it supports/doesn’t
support
○ Remember! “The more structure found in the stimuli, the less
structure the child must provide” (Owens, 2014, 228).
○ SLP modeling a narrative–give a personal story, relating to common
even
◉ SLP: Not adding to child’s narrative, aside from simple feedback
○ “Okay,” “Wow”, “Really?” or repetition of previous utterance
◉ Preschoolers: fictional, make believe stories; can use objects/pictures to
stimulate; SLP should model narrative or provide initial structure
○ Personal narratives: collect from conversation/prompted-natural
◉ Topics: Scariest/funniest thing happened, favorite movie/TV show, story
(may elicit sequential lists of events)
Narratives: Beginning Analysis
Macro and micro
Why do kids with LI struggle with micro and macro?
Narrative Analysis: macrostructural + microstructural
◉ Macro: overall structure
○ Hierarchical organization (story grammar)
◉ Micro: finite/internal linguistic structure
○ Dependent clauses, conjunctions, etc.
◉ Children with LI: often demonstrate difficulties with both macro+micro
○ Possibly due to broader difficulties with information processing (reduced
processing capacity)
○ Child’s ability to tell a story is more strongly linked to linguistic ability than
non-verbal IQ
○ Significant impact on everyday communication (peers, teachers…)
■ Major component of school curriculum; which subjects? How?
High Point Analysis
It helps identify what ?
High Point Analysis: most significant/important point of narrative; helps identify
narrative macrostructure
*Boom! (environmental noise)
*”Wow!”(exclamations)
*”It was my favorite” (evaluative statements)
* “Here’s the best part” (attention getters–hooks)
(emphasis, elongation, emotional statements, explanations…etc.)
◉ SLPs can identify narrative structure once child has/doesn’t have high point
◉ Classification of narrative level analysis important to assess
◉ **Tables 8.1 and 8.2
Story Grammar–Episode
Story Grammars: organizational pattern to aid in information
processing
○ setting+episode structure=story
○ **Episode: 7 story elements (next slide)
Story Grammar–Episode
7 parts
Setting (S)–character, setting (where + when)
2. Initiating Event (IE)–event that begins the story (inducing character to act)
3. Internal Response (IR)–emotional response (feelings) of the character;
motivation for the characters
4. Internal Plans (IP)–character plans (strategies) for attaining their goals (major
difficulty)
5. Attempts (A)–overt actions of the characters to bring about some consequence
(actions to attain goals)
6. Direct Consequence (DC)–describe the character’s success/failure at attaining
their goals (results of the attempts)
7. Reactions (R )–character’s emotional responses (thoughts etc.) to the outcome
**Story Grammar Marker–visuals to help children in therapy address areas of
weakness in creating narratives
Story Grammars
7 Sequence stages
Sequence of stages in story grammars: (See examples from class in
textbook p 233-234)
○ Descriptive: lot of description; setting statements (no causal/temporal
links)
○ Action: chronological order; setting + actions (no causal relations)
○ Reaction: setting+initiating event+action attempts (no goal directed
behaviors)
○ Abbreviated episode: setting +initiating event/internal response +
direct consequence
○ Complete episode: Goal-oriented behavioral sequence; setting + 2 of
the following (IE, IR, A) + direct consequence
○ Complex episode: Expansions of complete episode (multiple
episodes)
○ Interactive episode: 2 characters with separate goals/actions
(influencing other)
Expressive Elaboration (
Storyteller elaborates–goes beyond basic information to give a well-crafted
narrative
◉ Words/sentence structure chosen to excite, elaborate, interest…
◉ By age 9, all children should demonstrate expressive elaboration in their
narrative expression
◉ Types of elaborations found:
○ Evaluations: most frequent, increase with age
■ Ex. dialogue, internal states, repetitions (for emphasis)
○ Orientations: increase with age
■ Ex. names/relations of characters, personality attributes
○ Appendages: least frequent, increase with age
■ Ex. Introducer (marking beginning of narrative-temporal), theme
(summary within narrative)
Cohesion
3 types
Cohesive devices: linguistic means to link narrative utterances together
○ Reference cohesion-reference to characters, objects, locations–to
something else in text
■ Ex. He dropped it, bigger than that
○ Conjunctive cohesion-connects across phrases/utterances
■ Ex. Conjunctions; but, and, because, besides, in addition, in contrast
○ Lexical cohesion-links across utterances (using vocabulary)
■ Ex. Relationships by morphological endings used:
● He had been writing for several months. After the book was
finally written, he celebrated for days. He swore never to write
another novel.
○ *Children with LI may have difficulties with using cohesive devices
correctly
○ *Children with LI may have difficulties expressing well-organized
narratives
Narratives–Children with LI
Difficult to separate problems of the child with SLI/DLD re: narratives
○ Some studies show narratives contain essential elements of a story (i.e.
initiating events, endings, explicit reference to characters/events)
■ Other studies show missing elements, such as internal response (IR)
○ Missing complete, cohesive ties in the story
○ Lexical/syntactical omissions may negatively affect narratives
■ Difficulties with cohesion can be related to syntax
■ Children have difficulty with grammatical deficits–contributing to
difficulties with expressive narratives
● Problem with literature; compared to many TD age-matched
peers in peer-reviewed literature
● Seems that children with SLI/DLD narratives similar in content
to younger children, with more grammatical errors
Narratives–Testing
◉ Formal testing and informal
Formal testing: Narrative Scoring Scheme (NSS; Heilmann, Miller, Nockerts, &
Dunaway, 2010)–school-age children telling narrative
○ Promising tool for macro + microstructural assessment
○ Scoring system includes both story grammar elements and higher
inter-utterances text-level narrative skills
○ Rated as proficient/emerging/ minimal-immature focusing on varied skill
areas overall
◉ Informal testing: picture cards, wordless picture books
◉ Dynamic assessment: show importance to the student; may not seem to be
‘worthy’ of assessment, so student may not try his/her best
○ collection/analysis, then mediated language instruction, and then second
collection/analysis
○ Explore goals of a story, why telling a story well is important
Narratives–Testing (Owens, 2014, 243)
Questions re
Questions re: dynamic assessment:
◉ Was child forming a complete/coherent narrative?
◉ How difficult was it for the SLP to achieve positive change?
◉ Did the child pay attention and includes more elements in second narrative?
◉ Was the child able to transfer the learning without SLP support?
◉ Was learning quick and efficient?
–Children often very responsive; respond well (motivating activity overall)
