Development and reliability of a quantitative measure of adults' narratives

Abstract

Background: Assessing narrative discourse production in persons with aphasia has long challenged clinicians seeking to improve functional outcomes. Fortunately, the development of single picture or picture sequence stimuli has enabled clinicians to quantify aspects of elicited narrative discourse production in a clinical context. However, also needed for the analysis of the narrative discourse of individuals with aphasia are performance data for adults without brain damage. Such comparative data of both younger and older adults would considerably extend the clinical usefulness of discourse tasks that incorporate picture stimuli. However, elicited narrative discourse samples are only valuable as assessment tasks if the procedure yields samples of similar quality for an individual over time. Aims: The main objectives of this investigation were (a) to characterise the quality of the discourse narratives of non-brain-damaged (NBD) adults, examining the effects of stimulus types on their performance; (b) to compare the proportion of main events conveyed by younger and older NBD adults on the elicited narrative task, and (c) to estimate the test± retest reliability of these tasks with each group of participants. Methods & Procedures:A total of 40 neurologically intact adults were divided into younger (YG; N = 21) and older (OD; N = 19) groups. Participants attended two sessions, 10±20 days apart. Each time, participants viewed two pictures and two picture sequences (Nicholas & Brookshire, 1993) and told what was going on in the pictures. The language samples of each participant were then evaluated for the proportion of main events included, and test±retest reliability was assessed.Outcomes & Results: The YG group conveyed a significantly larger proportion of main events than the OD group. The main effect for picture stimulus was also significant; participants told significantly more main events in response to sequential versus single picture stimuli, regardless of age. Test±retest results yielded strong, positive correlations between sessions for both groups. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that age does influence performance in elicited narrative discourse. The YG group conveyed more causal links and relationships between the events depicted in the pictures than the OD group. Test±retest results indicate that the measure is stable over time for younger and older adults without brain damage.

The effects of age and education on pragmatic features of verbal communication: Evidence from the Italian version of the Right Hemisphere Language Battery (I-RHLB)

“…We found that narrative, variety, and discourse comprehension were affected by ageing and low education. These parameters considered richness and variety of conceptual ideas and cohesion between utterances that might easily be similar to those investigated by Doung and Ska (2001) and Harris Wright et al (2005). These findings are also in line with previous investigations that showed changes in the macrolinguistic aspects of discourse production such as quantity, precision, cohesion, and organisation of the language production occurring with increasing age (Critchley, 1984;Obler, 1989; see for a review Brownell & Joanette, 1993).…”

“…Low education affected performance only in the older group. Similar results were reported also by Harris Wright et al (2005) who showed that older subjects produced less information on main events in a narrative production task based on pictures or picture sequences.…”

“…However, some findings from our investigation seem to replicate previous ones (Doung and Ska, 2001;Harris Wright et al, 2005). We found that narrative, variety, and discourse comprehension were affected by ageing and low education.…”

Manipulating task instructions to change narrative discourse performance

“…Wright and colleagues (Wright, Capilouto, Wagovich, Cranfill, & Davis, 2005) developed a main events measure for use with the Nicholas and Brookshire (1993) picture stimuli (two single and two sequential picture stimuli). A main event was operationally defined as an event of sufficient importance to the story as a whole and independent from the other events in the story , 2006Wright et al, 2005). Resulting main events represented the sequential and/or temporal story schema depicted in the picture(s).…”

Análise de aspectos micro e macrolinguísticos da narrativa de indivíduos com doença de Alzheimer, comprometimento cognitivo leve e sem comprometimentos cognitivos

“…Muitos estudos têm utilizado a sequência de figuras para eliciar a narrativa em indivíduos sem comprometimento cognitivo e os resultados demonstram que adultos jovens apresentam desempenho melhor nas medidas de informatividade e conteúdo durante a produção do discurso, quando comparados com adultos mais velhos (Duong, Ska, 2001;Capilouto et al, 2005;Wright et al, 2005).…”