Telling a Good Story: Children With Specific
Language Impairment
Teresa A. Ukrainetz
Ronald B. Gillam
University of Wyoming
Utah State University
ASHA Convention, Miami, FL, November 16-18, 2006
ABSTRACT
This study compared the story art of 49 6 and 8 year old children with SLI to a same-age, same-gender
control group. Two imaginative narratives per child were scored for presence of 14 types of expressive
elaboration. Children with SLI were significantly lower on expressive elaboration in both contexts.They
were significantly lower even on simple artful elements such as openers/closers (e.g., Once there was,
The end) and character relations (e.g., teacher, mother). This study shows children with SLI need
guidance on artful storytelling as well as informational elements.
Purpose. This study examined expressive elaboration for the imaginative narratives of children with and
without SLI at two ages for two contexts contrasting on referential and expressive support.
Rationale. It is well established that children with specific language impairment (SLI) have difficulty
providing the informational or referential aspect of “what happened” in a story. The artful or expressive
aspect of storytelling is much less understood. Expressive elaboration deals with how the narrator goes
beyond a basic event recount to creating a more artful or interesting story.
McFadden and Gillam (1996), using a holistic rating procedure, found that children with SLI produced
stories of lower overall quality than their typically developing age- and language-matched peers. The lower
ratings were related more to text-level than sentence-level measures, but the scoring system did not
separate out referential from expressive components. Based on high point analysis (Labov, 1972; Peterson
& McCabe, 1983), Ukrainetz et al. (2005) developed an analysis of the artful elements of storytelling that
showed developmental change (beyond increased story length) from 5 to 12 years of age.
Research Questions.
1. Do children with and without SLI at two ages differ on expressive elaboration?
2. Do these groups differ for contrastive elicitation contexts?
3. Do these groups differ on elements that require little linguistic complexity?
METHOD
Participants
48 children with SLI (SLI): qualified for speech-language services in their schools; >1.25 s.d. below
the mean on 1+ TOLD composite; >70 on a non-verbal IQ test, no gross neurological, hearing, or
emotional conditions; not English language learners (Table 1).
48 typically developing children (TL): selected from a larger corpus to match average age, gender
distribution, and ethnicity distribution of SLI; not receiving special education services; obtained during
norming of Test of Narrative Language (Gillam & Pearson, 2004).
Table 1. Sample Demographics
SLI – 6yr
CON – 6yr
Number
23
23
Age
78.17 (3.70)
76.48 (3.37)
Gender
M-14, F-9
M-14, F-9
Ethnicity
W -11, M-12
W-13, M-10
SLI – 8yr
26
100.81 (3.21)
M-18, F-8
W-12, M-14
CON – 8yr
26
101.08 (3.10)
M-18, F-8
W-17, M-9
Note: M = Male, F = Female; W = White Non-Hispanic, M = Minority. Hispanic and Black children
consituted 91% of the minority category.
Procedure
Elicitation. The audiotaped narratives were individually elicited. For the first narrative (Event), the children
were shown a series of five pictures about a boy experiencing a series of problems that prevented him from
getting to school on time. For the second narrative (Fantasy), children were shown a single picture that
depicted two children watching an alien family walk off a spaceship that had landed in a park (see
illustrations). The first context provided more referential or informational/sequencing support. The second
context was expected to promote expressive or artful storytelling because of its fanciful and emotional
aspects.
Transcription. The narratives were transcribed and divided into T-units. A second examiner listened to all
the tapes and checked each transcript for errors, with discrepancies resolved.
Coding. Expressive elaboration involved 3 major categories and 14 subcategories. These were divided into
simple and sophisticated, based on the need for vocabulary diversity, grammatical complexity, or
psychological sophistication. Simple were introducer, title, ender, name, relation, and repetition.
Sophisticated were all others.
Scoring. 0-1-2 for elements that could and should occur many times (theme and all evaluations) and 0-1 for
items that generally occur once (all others) then summed over the two stories. This procedure differed from
the frequency scoring of Ukrainetz et al. (2005), but provided ease of scoring, length compensation, and
good reliability.
Reliability. Point-point inter-rater agreement on 20% of narratives had mean rates of >92% for each element
for each narrative. A secondary validity check, whereby the second rater judged the specific item coded,
had agreement of >95%.
Table 3. Elements of Expressive Elaboration
Category
Element
Example
Appendage
Introducer (S)
One morning, Once upon a time
Abstract (S)
This is about how you shouldn’t stay up
all night) or story titles (e.g., The Bad Day
Theme (S)
This was turning out to be a bad day.
Coda
And David Ann Thrailkill learned a lesson
that day. Don't sleep in. You'll be late for
school.
Ender (S)
The end.
Orientation
Character names (S)
Joe, Mrs. Pendley
Character relations (S) mother, pet, teacher
External conditions
It rained all day long.
Personality
He was just a kindergartner.
Evaluation
Modifiers
quickly, so, almost, consequently
Phrases and
woke up on the wrong side of the bed,
expressions
rather a lot, as fast as he could
Repetition (S)
very very fast, he looked and looked and
looked
Internal state
decided, thought, concluded,
discouraged, angry, tired
Direct dialogue
She said, “I want to go”, “Oh no, I’m late!
Note: S = Simple, requiring little linguistic complexity.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
This study addressed differences in expressive elaboration between SLI and TL at two ages. Table 2 shows
the consistently lower performance for SLI. Total expressive elaboration was significant in a two-way
analysis of variance for both group and age, with no significant interaction effect. Expressive elaboration
differed significantly for age and for group on a repeated measures ANOVA for the two story types and for
each story comparison. There was also a significant interaction effect for age, but not for group, with the
8yrs achieving significantly greater expressive elaboration scores on Alien than on Late. Significant main
effects on two-way univariate analyses of variance were also found for simple and sophisticated elements
for group and age, with no interaction effect. Cohen-d effect sizes were calculated on the F-values. All
values were large except for medium age;context and age; event interactions.
Table 2. The Expressive Elaboration of 6 and 8 Year Olds with and without SLI
Event Story
Fantasy Story
Simple
Sophisticated
Exp Elab
SLI – 6yr
2.17 (2.29)
2.74 (2.40)
2.13 (2.34)
2.78 (2.22)
4.91 (3.91)
TL – 6yr
3.91 (2.78)
5.00 (3.36)
4.26 (3.06)
4.65 (3.19)
8.91 (5.64)
SLI – 8yr
3.42 (2.66)
5.54 (3.49)
4.81 (2.68)
4.15 (3.31)
8.96 (5.63)
TL – 8yr
6.23 (3.12)
8.50 (2.93)
7.35 (2.83)
7.39 (3.15)
14.73 (5.54)
Figure 1. Mean Expressive Elaboration
15
12
9
Exp
Elab
6
3
0
SLI 6YR
TL 6YR
SLI 8YR
TL 8YR
Age and Group
Group and Individual Performance. The mean performance in Figure 1 and the scattergram in Figure 2
show, that, while there is overlap among the ages, the 6YR SLIs are noticeably lower and the 8YR TLs
are noticeably higher. The 6YR TLs and 8YR SLIs have the same distribution pattern.
Figure 2. Individual Expressive Elaboration
10
A
8
Exp
Elab
B
C
D
6
4
2
0
0
20
40
60
80
Participants
(A = SLI 6YR, B = TL 6YR, C = SLI 8YR, D = TL 8YR)
100
Participant
Event Narrative
6YR SLI
The kid woked up. He spilled the milk. He broke his tie. He
ran to (s*) the bus. He told the teacher. The teacher was
mad. 6Y2-033
6YR TL
Once upon a time there was a boy who woke up. And (sh*)
he poured his milk in his bowl for breakfast. And he started
spilling it. (S*) and then he put on his shoes. And one
(shoe) shoelace (fell o* bro) broke. And he had to fix it.
Then after that he was going to get on his bus. But the bus
leaved. Then he had to walk to school. And his teacher
start/ed to ask him why where you late? 06Y3122TX
8YR SLI
One morning the boy got up from bed pour the breakfast.
His shoelace broke.He was late for the bus. And he was
late to school. 08Y2-068
8YR TL
(One day a kid woke from from) (One day a) one day a kid
woke up because of his alarm clock. And he looked at it.
And it was almost eight o’clock. When he was pouring his
cereal he looked at the clock to see what time it was. And
milk overflowed. And when he was walking to school (his
shoelace got um) his shoelace snapped. And he was angry.
And he tried to run up to the bus and catch it. But he
missed it. And when he got to school the teacher said you
are late.
08Y46951WY
Individual Examples. The story samples above illustrate the differences in artful storytelling among the
four groups for the Event story. These “average” stories contained the mean number of expressive
elaboration elements for their age, group, and elicitation context. The 6yr SLI narrative minimally
describes each picture with a teacher label and an internal state word. The 8yr SLI is similarly short, but
has slightly more expressive elaboration with an opener and two theme words. The 6yr TL and 8yr SLI
narratives are longer and more detailed, with clear story elements: the late theme, “Once upon a time” as an
opener, and dialogue. The 8yr TL has those features plus modifiers and an internal state word.
Conclusion
These results show that children with SLI are lower than typical language children in all elements of
expressive elaboration, including those that are linguistically simple, such as “The end” or “teacher”.
They have trouble regardless of whether the context provides referential or expressive story support.
Children get better at expressive elaboration and can manage more difficult contexts as they get older,
but the gap between the children with and without SLI persists. Despite the improvement demonstrated
after two years of schooling, second graders with SLI are much like typically achieving first graders in
the elaborated language valued in school. These results show the need to address artful uses of language
in treatment.
References
Gillam, R. B. & Pearson, N. (2004). Test of Narrative Language. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed. Labov, W. (1972). Language in the inner
city. Philadelphia, PA: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press.
McCabe, A., & Peterson, C. (1984). What makes a good story? Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 13, 457-480.
McFadden, T.U., & Gillam, R. (1996). An examination of the quality of narratives produced by children with language
disorders. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in the Schools, 27, 48-57.
Ukrainetz, T.A., Justice, L.M., & Kaderavek, J.N. Eisenberg, S.L., Gillam, R.B., & Harm, H.H. (2005). The development of
expressive elaboration in fictional narratives. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 48, 1363-1377.