Episode Organization and Cohesive Conjunctives in Narratives of Children with and without Language Disorder

Abstract

Language-disordered children (chronological ages [CA] 7:6 [years:months] to 10:6) were compared with children who have normal language skills in their ability to cohere episode units in verbally produced narratives following a movie viewing. Cohesion across the episode boundaries was measured by judging the accuracy of conjunctives used to conjoin sentences. Each story was presented twice, once to an adult who had shared the movie viewing with the child, and once to an adult who had not seen the movie. Results indicated that (a) age correlated with the frequency of complete episodes in both groups of children, (b) only the children with normal language skills changed the number of complete episodes as a function of the listener's shared information, (c) neither group altered the accuracy of conjunctive use as a function of the listener, and (d) both groups used a higher frequency of accurate conjunctives to conjoin sentences within an episode than to conjoin sentences across episodes. Results are discussed in terms of the effects of age, language disorder, and listener context on the varying levels of narrative organization.