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Relationship between narrative microstructure and age in children with developmental speech and language disorders

Measures of narrative microstructure are used to assess the linguistic features of narrative samples. The most common are measures of syntactic complexity and lexical diversity (e.g., Mäkinen et al. 2014). Previous studies have shown a positive correlation between age and measures of syntactic complexity and lexical diversity (Frizelle et al. 2018 ; Hržica & Roch 2019 ; Wood et al. 2018), suggesting that these measures can be used to better understand the language abilities of children, including children with language and communication disorders (Botting 2002 ; Watkins et al. 1995). There have been no such studies in Croatia. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between measures of syntactic complexity, lexical diversity, and age. We expected to find correlations between the measures in narratives of children with different developmental language and speech disorders while controlling their results of standardized tests. The sample consisted of 38 children with developmental speech and language disorders (developmental language disorder, childhood apraxia of speech, and social communication disorder). Children narrated a story based on a sequence of pictures. We calculated correlations between measures of lexical diversity, syntactic complexity, and age. There was a significant correlation between age and syntactic complexity (ρ = .613, p < .01 ; ρ = .637, p < .01), but no correlation was found between age and lexical diversity measures. When interpreting these results, several factors should be considered that may influence the relationship between narrative microstructure and age, such as differences in a population sample, narrative elicitation task, and sample size.

Language and speech disorders ; Narrative microstructure ; Lexical diversity ; Syntactic complexity

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