J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2014 Jun 1;57(3):876-86. doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2013/13-0097).
Few tools are available to examine the narrative speaking ability of adolescents. Hence, the authors designed a new narrative task and sought to determine whether it would elicit a higher level of syntactic complexity than a conversational task in adolescents with typical language development.
Forty adolescents (Mage = 14;0 [years;months]; 20 boys and 20 girls) were individually interviewed. Each adolescent participated in a standard conversational task followed by a narrative task that involved listening to fables and retelling the stories. It was predicted that the narrative task would elicit a higher level of syntactic complexity than the conversational task because fables, although superficially simple stories, express rather sophisticated meanings.
The narrative task elicited greater syntactic complexity than the conversational task as measured by mean length of C-unit and clausal density. Additionally, the 2 syntactic measures, mean length of C-unit and clausal density, were closely associated on both tasks.
Fables can elicit a high level of syntactic complexity in adolescents with typical language development. Future studies are needed to build a normative database using fables.
目前几乎没有工具可用于评估青少年的叙事口语能力。因此，作者设计了一种新的叙事任务，并试图确定与对话任务相比，该任务是否能在语言发育正常的青少年中引发更高水平的句法复杂性。
对 40 名青少年（平均年龄 = 14 岁；0 [岁；月]；20 名男孩和 20 名女孩）进行了个体访谈。每位青少年都参加了一项标准的对话任务，然后是一项叙事任务，即听寓言并复述故事。研究人员预测，由于寓言虽然表面上是简单的故事，但表达的含义却相当复杂，因此叙事任务会引发比对话任务更高水平的句法复杂性。
叙事任务比对话任务引发了更高水平的句法复杂性，这可以通过 C 单位的平均长度和分句密度来衡量。此外，在这两个任务中，2 个句法测量指标（C 单位的平均长度和分句密度）密切相关。
寓言可以在语言发育正常的青少年中引发高水平的句法复杂性。需要进一步的研究来使用寓言建立一个规范的数据库。
