Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2024 Nov 7;67(11):4431-4445. doi: 10.1044/2024_JSLHR-23-00579. Epub 2024 Oct 11.
Both fictional oral narrative and expository oral discourse skills are critical language competencies that support children's academic success. Few studies, however, have examined African American children's microstructure performance across these genres. To address this gap in the literature, the study compared African American children's microstructure productivity and complexity across three discourse contexts: fictional narratives, informational discourse, and procedural discourse. The study also examined whether there were age-related differences in microstructure performance by discourse type.
Participants were 130 typically developing African American children, aged 59-95 months old, enrolled in kindergarten through second grades in a Midwestern U.S. public school district. Wordless children's books were used to elicit fictional narratives, informational, and procedural discourse. Indicators of microstructure performance included measures of productivity (i.e., number of total words and number of different words) and complexity (i.e., mean length of communication unit and complex syntax rate). The effects of genre and age on microstructure performance were assessed using linear mixed-effects regression models.
Children produced longer discourse and used a greater diversity of words for their fictional stories compared to their informational or procedural discourse. Grammatical complexity was greater for fictional narratives and procedural discourse than informational discourse. Results showed greater productivity and complexity among older children compared to younger children, particularly for fictional and informational discourse.
African American children exhibit variation in their microstructure performance by discourse context and age. Understanding this variation is key to providing African American children with support to maximize their oral language competencies.
虚构口头叙事和说明性口头话语技能都是支持儿童学业成功的关键语言能力。然而，很少有研究考察过非裔美国儿童在这两种体裁中的微观结构表现。为了弥补文献中的这一空白，本研究比较了非裔美国儿童在三种话语情境下的微观结构产出和复杂性：虚构叙事、信息性话语和程序性话语。该研究还考察了微观结构表现是否存在与话语类型相关的年龄差异。
参与者为 130 名发育正常的非裔美国儿童，年龄在 59-95 个月之间，来自美国中西部一个公立学区的幼儿园到二年级。使用无字儿童书籍来引出虚构叙事、信息性和程序性话语。微观结构表现的指标包括产出指标（即总词数和不同词数）和复杂度指标（即交际单位的平均长度和复杂句法率）。使用线性混合效应回归模型评估体裁和年龄对微观结构表现的影响。
与信息性或程序性话语相比，儿童在虚构故事中生成的话语更长，使用的词汇也更多样。与信息性话语相比，虚构叙事和程序性话语的语法复杂度更高。与年幼的孩子相比，年长的孩子在产出和复杂度方面表现出更大的差异，尤其是在虚构和信息性话语中。
非裔美国儿童在话语情境和年龄方面表现出微观结构表现的差异。了解这种差异对于为非裔美国儿童提供支持以最大限度地提高他们的口语语言能力至关重要。
