Narrative Discourse in Young Children With Histories of Early Corrective Heart Surgery

Abstract

Narrative attainment was assessed in a group of 76 four-year-old children at risk for brain injury because of histories of early corrective heart surgery. Elicited personal experience narratives were coded for narrative components, evaluative devices, and information adequacy and were contrasted with narratives produced by a comparison group of typically developing 4-year-olds. The production of autonomous narrative discourse was identified as an area of special vulnerability for children with this medical history. Despite considerable heterogeneity in narrative performance, children with early corrective heart surgery produced fewer narrative components than typically developing children. Results suggest that the elaboration of events and contextual information, the expression of subjective evaluation and causality, and clarity and explicitness of information reporting may constitute special challenges for this population of children. Implications of these findings for clinical assessment and possible risks for socioemotional relationships and academic achievement are discussed.

Long-term outcome of speech and language in children after corrective surgery for cyanotic or acyanotic cardiac defects in infancy

“…Our parental report data support the general observation that children after cardiac surgery are found at elevated risk for developmental delay and disorders with respect to language and speech. 2,3,9,10,14,28,29 The parental reports were corroborated by the follow-up data obtained from standardized speech and language examination. On all measures of oral and speech functions as contained in the Oral and Speech Motor Control Protocol 23 and the Mayo Test of Speech and Oral Apraxia, 24 both groups scored below the average performance or below normal cutoff values of children of the same age as estimated from the validation studies of the respective test instrument.…”

The Index of Narrative Microstructure: A Clinical Tool for Analyzing School-Age Children’s Narrative Performances

“…Greenhalgh & Strong, 2001;Hughes et al, 1997;Liles et al, 1995;Loban, 1976;Strong, 1998). This literature includes numerous studies detailing the age-and grade-related changes evident in both macro-and microstructural elements of children's narratives from preschool into adolescence (e.g., Dickinson, Wolf, & Stotsky, 1993;Liles, 1985;McCabe & Peterson, 1991;McCabe & Rollins, 1994;Stein, 1982), as well as the differences seen in narrative ability when comparing children from various subpopulations (e.g., Hemphill et al, 2002;Kaderavek & Sulzby, 2000;Liles et al, 1995). Johnson (1995) noted that published research was particularly useful for professionals to draw upon for analyzing narrative outcome data given the proliferation of both single studies and published reviews of narrative development in recent decades.…”

“…children in certain risk groups (e.g., those with language impairment and those with cognitive disabilities) differ significantly from those of typical children (e.g., Boudreau & Hedberg, 1999;Hayes, Norris, & Flaitz, 1998;Hemphill, Uccelli, Winner, Chang, & Bellinger, 2002;Kaderavek & Sulzby, 2000;Liles, Duffy, Merritt, & Purcell, 1995;Ripich & Griffith, 1988;Scott & Windsor, 2000;van der Lely, 1997). Of particular relevance to speech-language pathologists are additional findings showing that some narrative measures can reliably differentiate between children with and without language impairment (e.g., Liles et al, 1995;Scott & Windsor, 2000).…”

Emerging temporality: past tense and temporal/aspectual markers in Spanish-speaking children's intra-conversational narratives

“…Only further research with larger samples could confirm the developmental co-occurrences reported here. These findings offer an initial A P P E N D I X : Narrative components : coding manual (adapted from Hemphill, Uccelli, Winner, Chang & Bellinger, 2002) Children's narrative utterances were broken down into clauses. A clause is defined as ' a unit that contains a unified predicate, _ [i.e.]…”