Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2022 Aug 17;65(8):2931-2947. doi: 10.1044/2022_JSLHR-22-00002. Epub 2022 Aug 1.
Oral narrative, or storytelling, skills may constitute a linguistic strength for African American children, with implications for academic and social well-being. Despite this possibility, few studies have examined individual differences in oral narrative skill among African American children. To address this gap in the literature, this study examined how children's linguistic and cognitive skills predicted their competence in structuring oral stories, both on average and for children with different levels of narrative skill.
Fictional oral narratives were elicited from a sample of 144 typically developing African American children, aged 4-8 years, using a wordless picture book as the stimulus. The effects of children's vocabulary, complex syntax, and nonverbal cognitive skills on macrostructural performance were assessed using linear regression to test average effects and simultaneous quantile regression to test effects across different levels of narrative skill.
Children's competence in using complex syntax and nonverbal cognition, but not vocabulary, was predictive of narrative production, on average and as a function of narrative skill. Syntactic complexity appeared increasingly more relevant as children's narrative skill increased, whereas nonverbal cognition emerged as the most important for children at the lower to moderate ends of the narrative skill distribution.
Both linguistic and cognitive skills help explain individual differences in African American children's macrostructural competence. Promoting children's development of complex syntax and nonverbal reasoning may provide potential mechanisms for supporting oral narrative skill development.
口头叙事或讲故事的技能可能构成非裔美国儿童的语言优势，对学业和社会福祉都有影响。尽管存在这种可能性，但很少有研究考察过非裔美国儿童口头叙事技能的个体差异。为了弥补这一文献空白，本研究考察了儿童的语言和认知技能如何预测他们在构建口头故事方面的能力，包括平均水平和不同叙事技能水平的儿童。
使用一本无字图画书作为刺激，从 144 名发育正常的非裔美国儿童中引出虚构的口头叙事。使用线性回归评估儿童词汇量、复杂句法和非言语认知技能对宏观结构表现的影响，以检验平均效应；使用同时分位数回归检验不同叙事技能水平下的效应。
儿童在使用复杂句法和非言语认知方面的能力，但不是词汇量，平均水平和叙事技能水平上都可以预测叙事生成。句法复杂度的相关性随着儿童叙事技能的提高而增加，而非言语认知则成为叙事技能分布中较低和中等水平儿童最重要的因素。
语言和认知技能都有助于解释非裔美国儿童宏观结构能力的个体差异。促进儿童复杂句法和非言语推理的发展可能为支持口头叙事技能发展提供潜在机制。
