Mahamid Bahaa Hussein, Saiegh-Haddad Elinor
Department of English Literature and Linguistics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2025 Mar 26;68(3S):1552-1568. doi: 10.1044/2024_JSLHR-24-00013. Epub 2025 Mar 19.
The study tested macro- and microstructure narrative skills in kindergarten Arabic-speaking children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and in age-matched children with typical language development (TLD). Specifically, it compared narrative skills in the two groups of children in two story modes: storytelling in Spoken Arabic (SpA) versus retelling of a story heard in Standard Arabic (StA).
Two LITMUS-MAIN stories (Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings-Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives) matched on episodic structure were used: one for storytelling and another for story retelling. Eighteen children with DLD ( = 5.6 years) and 19 age-matched children with TLD ( = 5.7 years) were administered two tasks: a storytelling task in SpA and a retelling of a story heard in StA. Macrostructure was analyzed using setting and goal-attempt-outcome schema. Microstructure analysis addressed productivity, lexical diversity, and morphosyntactic accuracy.
Children with TLD demonstrated significantly higher scores compared to children with DLD on macrostructure and on most microstructure features, demonstrating higher productivity and fewer morphosyntactic errors in subject-verb gender agreement. The findings also revealed a significant effect of story mode; both groups demonstrated higher macrostructure skills and higher type-token ratio in the retelling mode yet higher linguistic productivity in the storytelling mode.
The results support earlier reports of differences between children with TLD and those with DLD in narrative skills across story modes. Moreover, the results demonstrate the role of the story retelling mode in enhancing macrostructure generation and lexical diversity in both groups of children, even though narration in our case was conducted in StA, a variety less familiar to children. The implications of these findings for assessment and intervention are discussed.
本研究测试了患有发育性语言障碍（DLD）的阿拉伯语幼儿园儿童以及年龄匹配的语言发育正常（TLD）儿童的宏观和微观结构叙事技巧。具体而言，研究比较了两组儿童在两种故事模式下的叙事技巧：用阿拉伯语口语（SpA）讲故事与复述用标准阿拉伯语（StA）听到的故事。
使用了两个情节结构匹配的LITMUS-MAIN故事（多语言环境中的语言障碍测试-叙事多语言评估工具）：一个用于讲故事，另一个用于故事复述。对18名患有DLD的儿童（平均年龄=5.6岁）和19名年龄匹配的TLD儿童（平均年龄=5.7岁）进行了两项任务：用SpA进行讲故事任务以及复述用StA听到的故事。使用背景和目标-尝试-结果模式分析宏观结构。微观结构分析涉及产出能力、词汇多样性和形态句法准确性。
与患有DLD的儿童相比，TLD儿童在宏观结构和大多数微观结构特征上的得分显著更高，在主谓性别一致方面表现出更高的产出能力和更少的形态句法错误。研究结果还揭示了故事模式的显著影响；两组在复述模式下都表现出更高的宏观结构技巧和更高的类型- token比率，但在讲故事模式下语言产出能力更高。
结果支持了早期关于TLD儿童和DLD儿童在不同故事模式下叙事技巧存在差异的报道。此外，结果表明故事复述模式在增强两组儿童的宏观结构生成和词汇多样性方面的作用，尽管在我们的案例中叙事是用StA进行的，这是儿童不太熟悉的一种语言变体。讨论了这些发现对评估和干预的意义。
