Purpose: This study examined the accuracy and potential clinical utility of two expedited transcription methods for narrative language samples elicited from school-age children (7;5-11;10 [years;months]) with developmental language disorder. Transcription methods included real-time transcription produced by speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and…

Purpose: Narrative skill represents a higher-level linguistic skill that shows incremental development in the preschool years. During these years, there are considerable individual differences in this skill, with some children being highly skilled narrators (i.e., precocious) relative to peers of their age. In this study, we explored the…

Background: A growing body of literature has demonstrated the importance of discourse assessment in patients who suffered from brain injury, both in the left and right hemispheres, as discourse represents a key component of functional communication. However, little is known about the relationship between gray matter density and macrolinguistic…

Purpose: Though the frequency of gesture use by infants has been related to the development of different language abilities in the initial stages of language acquisition, less is known about whether this frequency (or "gesture rate") continues to correlate with language measures in later stages of language acquisition, or whether the…

Purpose: Language production, a dynamic process involving real-time language processing, is crucial for children's language and communication development. To explore the early development of children's real-time language production, this study investigated Chinese preschool children's pausing strategies in narratives and their associations with…

Purpose: This study examined whether the Predictive Early Assessment of Reading and Language (PEARL), a dynamic assessment of narratives that measures language comprehension and production, accurately classifies Navajo preschoolers with typically developing (TD) language or with language impairment (LI). Method: Ninety 4- and 5-year-old Navajo…

Purpose: Narrative assessment is one potentially underutilized and inconsistent method speech-language pathologists may use when considering a diagnosis of developmental language disorder (DLD). However, narration research encompasses many varied methodologies. This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to (1) investigate how various narrative…

Purpose: This study evaluated interrater reliability (IRR) and test-retest stability (TRTS) of seven linguistic measures (percent correct information units, relevance, subject-verb-[object], complete utterance, grammaticality, referential cohesion, global coherence), and communicative success in unstructured conversation and in a story narrative…

Purpose: We aimed to study narrative skills in Mandarin-speaking children with language impairment (LI) to compare with children with LI speaking Indo-European languages. Method: Eighteen Mandarin-speaking children with LI (mean age 6;2 [years;months]) and 18 typically developing (TD) age controls told 3 stories elicited using the Mandarin…

Purpose: To determine the diagnostic accuracy of the finite verb morphology composite (FVMC), number of errors per C-unit (Errors/CU), and percent grammatical C-units (PGCUs) in differentiating school-aged children with language impairment (LI) and those with typical language development (TL). Method: Participants were 61 six-year-olds (50 TL, 11…

Purpose: We examined indices of narrative microstructure as metrics of language development and impairment in Arabic-speaking children. We examined their age sensitivity, correlations with standardized measures, and ability to differentiate children with average language and language impairment. Method: We collected story narratives from 177…

Purpose: Prior theoretical and empirical work has referenced several broad stages of narrative development, particularly in terms of young children's understanding of story structure. However, there is considerable variation in how story structure has been defined and assessed across these studies. The aims of the present study were threefold: (a)…

Purpose: This study examined narrative quality of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) using a well-studied "story goodness" coding system. Method: Narrative samples were analyzed for distinct aspects of story goodness and rated by naïve readers on dimensions of story goodness, accuracy, cohesiveness, and oddness. Adolescents…

Purpose: The study examined the contributions of Spanish and English oral narrative skills to English reading among 95 early elementary dual language learners (DLLs) from Spanish-speaking homes in the United States. This sample of first- and third-grade DLL children attended Spanish-English dual language immersion programs and received language…

Purpose: In this study, we examined syntactic complexity in the spoken language samples of young adults. Its purpose was to contribute to the expanding knowledge base in later language development and to begin building a normative database of language samples that potentially could be used to evaluate young adults with known or suspected language…