Personal event narratives and fictional stories are narrative genres which emerge early and undergo further development throughout the preschool and early elementary school years. This study compares personal event and fictional narratives across two language-ability groups using episodic analysis. Thirty-six normal children (aged 4 to 8 years) were divided into high and low language-ability groups using Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS). Three fictional stories and three personal event narratives were gathered from each subject and were scored for length in communication units, total types of structures found within the narrative, and structure of the whole narrative. Narrative genre differences significantly influenced narrative structure for both language-ability groups and narrative length for the high language-ability group. Personal events were told with more reactive sequences and complete episodes than fictional stories, while fictional stories were told with more action sequences and multiple-episode structures. Compared to the episodic story structure of fictional stories, where a prototypical ‘good” story is a multiple-episode structure, a reactive sequence and/or a single complete episode structure may be an alternate, involving mature narrative forms for relating personal events. These findings suggest that narrative structures for personal event narratives and fictional stories may follow different developmental paths. Finally, differences in productive language abilities contributed to the distinctions in narrative structure between fictional stories and personal event narratives. As compared to children in the low group, children in the high group told narratives with greater numbers of complete and multiple episodes, and their fictional stories were longer than their personal event narratives.

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This study surveyed 21 otolaryngologists (70% return) and 32 speech-language pathologists (46% return) in Maine about the treatment of vocal nodules in children and adults, referral patterns, effectiveness of therapy, and adequacy of speech-language pathologists’ training. Differences in opinions between the two professional groups were found in treatment of children and referral patterns.

The exact nature of ipsilateral auditory pathway suppression under dichotic stimulation remains controversial. To help resolve this controversy, the distinctive feature confusions (blend vs nonblend errors) made on a dichotic listening CV test by two hemispherectomees were analyzed. Results support ipsilateral auditory pathway suppression under dichotic CV stimulation. Ipsilateral auditory pathway suppression is discussed in terms of stimulus specificity, subject, and task difference.

This study compared the hemispheric dominance for language of three groups of 6-to 9year-olds (10 language-disordered, 10 articulation-disordered, and 10 normal children). Two dichotic listening tests (digits and animal names) were administered. Statistical analysis revealed a left hemisphere dominance for the control and articulation-disordered groups but no significant hemisphere differences for the languagedisordered group. The results support the hypothesis that the language-disordered child has an unlateralized cerebral dominance for language, while the articulation-disordered child has normal left cerebral hemisphere dominance for language. Furthermore, there is some evidence to suggest that the language-disordered child does not process auditory stimuli in the lefthemisphere as efficiently as the articulation-disordered or normal child. These results also suggest the importance of developing strategies in the management of these disorders.