Fables can elicit a high level of syntactic complexity in adolescents with typical language development. Future studies are needed to build a normative database using fables.

The critical-thinking task has potential for use as a new type of language-sampling tool to examine language production and comprehension in adolescents.

Syntactic complexity was best revealed by a narrative task that involved fables. The study offers benchmarks for language development during early adulthood.

Metacognitive verbs (MCVs) such as believe, know and think allow a speaker to describe the thoughts, feelings and perspectives of the self and others. As such, these words reflect the speaker's awareness of differing mental events and activities, or Theory of Mind (ToM). This study investigated the use of MCVs in adolescents with typical language development in relation to the production of complex sentences. It was of interest to determine the frequency with which adolescents used MCVs and to explore the links between MCVs and different types of subordinate clauses. Language samples that had been collected during previous research involving fables were examined. The results indicated that adolescents frequently used MCVs, particularly during a critical-thinking task, and that MCVs were associated with the production of complex sentences containing various types of subordinate clauses. This information may be useful to speech-language pathologists in their work with adolescents who have language impairments.

The Fables task has potential for clinical use with adolescents. Research is necessary to expand the normative database to include larger and more diverse groups of adolescents.