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Young children's oral narration typically progresses from telling disordered events to production of well-sequenced stories. To investigate how this development is supported and whether effects of support extend to literacy, 59 mother-child dyads from low-income family backgrounds were studied longitudinally. Maternal verbal input to narration was assessed when children were three, four, and five years old. Children's personal narratives were assessed at age five, and reading outcomes were measured at first, second, third and sixth grades on a subsample. Maternal support was differentially related to oral narrative and reading outcomes. Mothers first provided orientation information and supported developing story actions and events with their three- and four-year-olds and focused on narrative evaluation with their five-year-olds. Although few distal relations were found between maternal input and children's oral narrative abilities, several types of maternal support across the preschool years correlated with later decoding, including prompts for and contributions of evaluation.

To investigate the narrative development of Chinese-speaking children aged 3--6 years, 80 children were prompted to tell personal stories. High point analysis was used and both narrative components and overall narrative patterns were analyzed. In terms of narrative components, Chinese children were more skillful in using complicating action, orientation and evaluation than they were in resolution, direct and reported speech. With age, their narratives were longer and richer in content. No gender differences were found in any of the seven narrative components. For narrative patterns, the most frequent was the two-event pattern at age 3 and the chronological pattern from age 4 to age 6. However, the chronological pattern at age 5 and 6 differed from the chronological pattern at age 4. The proportion of leap-frog, two-event and one-event patterns decreased with age, but most Chinese children at age 6 have yet to develop the ability to tell a classic narrative that includes resolution. These findings provided evidence for a developmental pattern of the narrative development in preschool Chinese children and suggested more attention should be paid to improve children's ability to resolve a story, telling listeners how everything worked out in the end.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) produce impoverished personal narratives. We developed an intervention to improve parental talk with their son/daughter with ASD which would thereby improve the child's narration. In this pilot study, we randomly assigned parents to an intervention group who received information about the importance of personal narratives and techniques for improving narration, or a wait-list control group. We compared changes in narration of those with ASD whose parents were in the intervention group versus the wait-list control group. Two recordings of parent-child conversations were scored for elaboration and topic-maintenance versus off-topic remarks. Elaboration skills showed significant improvement among intervention parents, which was related to child elaboration in the same conversation and several months later. Parents in the intervention group, but not control group, reported significant improvement in their son/daughter's narration. Narrative skills intervention with parents is a promising corrective to the narration difficulties of those with ASD.

Young adults with High Functioning Autism and a matched comparison group told personal narratives using a standard conversational procedure. Longest narratives were determined (i.e., number of propositions included) and scored using an analysis that looks at the organization of a narrative around a highpoint. The group with Autism Spectrum Disorder produced narratives with significantly poorer HP macrostructure and introduced proportionately fewer propositions with conjunctions. Such impairments in the ability to make sense of personal experiences both reflect and contribute to difficulty in social-emotional functioning.

The "Expressive Vocabulary Test" (EVT) has recently been found culturally fair for an economically mixed sample of African American children, and others have argued that it is fairer for such participants than the "Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III" (PPVT-III). In this study, the authors sought to replicate these findings with an exclusively low-income group in the southeastern United States and to analyze errors. An African American graduate student administered the EVT and the PPVT-III to 53 African American children ages 5 years 4 months to 12 years 3 months (kindergarten through fourth grade) receiving free lunch. Contrary to prior research, children performed significantly below the norm on both the EVT and the PPVT-III. Neither test seemed easier. An item analysis of 785 errors revealed that approximately 75% were strong associates of target words and/or accurate descriptions of EVT pictures. African American children from low-income backgrounds appear to interpret EVT instructions differently from the official instructions, which led to compromised performance. (Contains 3 tables.)

Purpose: Research has established that African American (AA) children are lagging behind other children in their reading skills. A number of factors have been proposed to account for the literacy gap; however no single factor has entirely explained this disparity. This investigation examined the appropriateness of the Gray Oral Reading Test-Fourth Edition (GORT-4) for identifying the oral reading proficiency skills of African American English (AAE)-speaking children in the second and fourth grades by comparing their reading skills with their levels of dialect usage as measured by the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation-Screening Test (DELV-ST). Method: The DELV-ST and the GORT-4 were used to assess 33 typically developing AA students in second and fourth grades. The scores were analyzed to evaluate associations between the two measures. Results: Results of the DELV-ST indicated that the majority of the participants were AAE-speaking children. The participants also scored below the mean for the normative sample on the GORT-4. A statistically significant correlation was found between the participants' DELV-ST scores (higher scores represent less variation from mainstream American English; lower scores represent more variation and higher AAE usage) and participants' performance on the GORT-4 comprehension subtest, as well as a significant correlation between their grade level and performance on the GORT-4, in particular between the rate subtest and grade. Findings are discussed in terms of using the GORT-4 with caution by professionals in determining the reading skills of AA children who speak AAE. There could be some value in using the GORT with AAE-speaking children even though they may score lower on it.

Purpose: Personal narratives are common in children's conversations, recommended as the appropriate genre for early writing by educators, and part of many high-stakes tests, possibly because they tend to be better formed than fictional narratives. However, current practice in the field of speech-language pathology employs fictional narratives in assessment, intervention, and study of children with impaired language development. This article explored performance on personal versus fictional narratives by children with language impairment (LI), hypothesizing that performance on the former would be better and a minimal relationship between performances in the 2 genres. Method: Twenty-seven children age 7;0-9;9 (years;months) with LI orally produced personal and fictional narratives (responses to a wordless picture book). Narratives were analyzed by raters blind to experimental hypotheses using high-point analysis and an analysis derived from scoring of a high-stakes composition for 4th grade. Results: High-point ratings of personal significantly exceeded those of fictional narratives. Disproportionate fictional stories did not meet minimal narrative criteria. However, more personal narratives than would be expected by chance did. The analyses were significantly correlated. Quality of a child's performance of personal was minimally related to that of fictional narratives. Conclusions: Clinicians may want to consider functional aspects of personal narratives. (Contains 2 tables.)

A study was conducted to examine the misdiagnosis of cultural difference deficits and how mistaking deficits in narrative production for cultural differences can be avoided. Findings reveal the implications for intervention.

Forty-nine African American children (ages 3-5) enrolled in Head Start were assessed using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. Their mean score was significantly lower than the mean for the normative sample. Few items were systematically missed; instead, performance seemed reflective of socioeconomic and/or ethnic patterns of vocabulary usage. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

Data from three studies investigating factors supporting literacy development of children from low-income families indicate: early levels of achievement are strongly linked to later success; kindergarten vocabulary is strongly reflective of the use of varied vocabulary during meal times; and teacher training in literacy is beneficial to classroom environments. (Contains references.) (CR)

Developed taxonomy of eight types of negation found in children's narratives, and examined children's personal narratives and narratives elicited by picture books. Found most frequent negation to be reference to actions that did not happen. Younger children used negation more than older children, and negation occurred more frequently in personal than in picture book elicited narratives. (DLH)

Investigated whether low-income mothers learned to interact with their preschoolers in ways that fostered narrative skills. Mothers of intervention children were encouraged to elicit questions, encourage longer narratives, and participate in narrative conversation. Assessment of children's pre- and post-intervention narrative and vocabulary skills indicated that intervention children showed significant improvement compared to control children. (SM)

Describes the Narrative Assessment Profile, a comprehensive discourse-analysis measure for evaluating topic maintenance, event sequencing, explicitness, referencing, conjunctive cohesion, and fluency. Clinical implications for the assessment and intervention of narrative discourse in school-age children are discussed. (Author/DB)

Stanza analysis of the conversational narratives of Japanese children, aged five to nine, reveals that they are succinct and usually consist of free-standing collections of three experiences and that stanzas usually consist of three lines. The similarity between these narratives and the Japanese literacy forms of "haiku" and "karuta" are discussed. (61 references) (JL)

Presents analyses of the use of the essential connectives "so,""because,""then," and "but" in narratives of children aged three to nine years. Connectives were used semantically, pragmatically, or, rarely, in error. Age changes were minimal. Structural complexity and elaboration improved throughout the school years. (GH)

Emergency telephone calls to 911 are examined for their content and effectiveness. The primary criticism of the calls was that many lapsed into a description of events, rather than being restricted to an immediate call for help.