Using Questions To Promote Macro- Or Microstructure Elements In Narratives - Info and Reading Options

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Narrative abilities refer to the telling of a story or an event. Despite the seemingly simplicity of the task, narrative skills require complex language skills including organizing story elements in a coherent way (known as macrostructure) and using sophisticated linguistics devices to improve the clarity of the story (known as microstructure). In fact, narrative skills are linked to later reading and literacy development (Paris & Paris, 2003; Oakhill & Cain, 2012) as well as writing and mathematics (Griffin et al., 2004; O’Neill et al., 2004). It would follow that children with a developmental language disorder (DLD) and learning disabilities have difficulties with understanding and producing narratives (Bishop & Adams, 1992; Boudreau & Chapman, 2000; Fey, Catts, Proctor-Williams, Tomblin, & Zhang, 2004; Gillam & Johnston, 1992; Greenhalgh & Strong, 2001; Newman & McGregor, 2006; Scott & Windsor, 2000), which, in turn, affects academic success (Bishop & Adams, 1992; Boudreau & Hedberg, 1999; Gillam & Johnston, 1992). Given that narrative skills support language development and academic success, improving the macrostructure and microstructure components in narratives would be beneficial for all children, especially children with DLD and learning disabilities. One promising approach – that could also be easily implemented in practice – is to use cues, namely in the form of questions to enhance oral narrative (Silva & Cain, 2015; 2019). Questions would serve as additional cues to highlight key aspects of the story. Therefore, in this study, we investigated the effect of using tailored questions on the macrostructure and microstructure of narratives produced by children. In addition, we examined the relation between narrative skills and language and working memory skills. In research and clinical practice, narratives can either be elicited through a story telling task in which the child generates a story from a wordless picture book or a story retelling task in which the child retells the examiner’s story. We focus on the former task in this study. The content of narratives is typically analyzed based on two dimensions: macrostructure and microstructure. Macrostructure, or coherence, refers to how story elements (e.g., character, settings, problem, solution) are included in the story so that the story makes sense. Microstructure, or cohesion, is assessed through measures of literate language or language productivity. Literate language refers to the use of sophisticated linguistic devices such as conjunctions, mental verbs, and clearly referenced pronouns in order to demonstrate relations between sentences. Language productivity is measured by number of utterances, mean length of utterance, total number of words, and number of different words. Sufficient inclusion of macrostructure and microstructure elements are crucial for telling a good story. Indeed, there is a large body of research on strategies and intervention developed to improve narrative skills. However, most of the work has focused on macrostructure with the presumption that microstructure skills would improve incidentally, which has not been found to be the case (Peterson, 2011). In a systematic review of the literature, Peterson (2011) investigated existing research on narrative intervention in pre-school and school age children due to the emergence of narrative-based language intervention. Studies employing a narrative intervention for children between the ages of 3 to 21 years with a language impairment were reviewed. The review indicated that changes to macrostructure were more significant than microstructure, although intervention primarily focused on macrostructure skills. Overall, Peterson’s (2011) review suggested that changes in microstructure were minimal as well as receiving less attention than macrostructure. It would follow that studies focused on improving both microstructure, in addition to macrostructure are warranted. One potential way that could be used to guide children’s attention to macrostructure and microstructure elements is through the use of questions. There are many reasons why questions can support storytelling skills including priming learning. Priming refers to the tendency to repeat the linguistic structure previously used without an explicit request. In a seminal study, Huttenlocher et al. (2004) demonstrated the effects of priming on children’s language development. In their priming paradigm, children were shown pictures described in a particular syntactic form (e.g., passive form) by the experimenter. Results showed that children who heard passive forms were more likely to produce passives than the control group. A fairly recent study conducted in 2021 by Garraffa and team examined the training of syntax in a classroom to produce passive sentences using priming and found that exposure to rich language in the classroom is beneficial in terms of implicit learning and language skills. More broadly, there are studies that suggest that the language a child is exposed to affects their own language production (indirect effect) on a long term basis but has a direct effect on their immediate production (Hoff-Ginsberg, 1998; Huttenlocher et al., 2002; Hoff, 2006; Kidd, 2012). The idea that questions could be used to improve narratives has recently been investigated by Silva and Cain (2015; 2019). Although not initially conceptualized within the framework of priming learning, preliminary results demonstrated some benefits of using questions to prime narratives. The studies examined whether questions had an effect on narrative productions and if a child’s memory, cognitive ability, vocabulary, and grammar were related to the effect of questions prior to the production task. It was hypothesized that children who were asked questions about the story before their producing a narrative would have better narrative (e.g., include more macrostructure and microstructure elements) than children who were asked questions after telling the story. In addition, the former group had better performance in memory tasks than the later. Language tasks were expected to be related to narrative skills to a greater extent than working memory tasks. Across both papers, results consistently indicated that being asked questions before the story elicited more coherent stories but had minimal impacts on cohesion. Older children performed better in narrative production (i.e., they produced more coherent and cohesive narrations than younger children). Although microstructure inclusion did not seem to depend on the timing of questions, it was found that older children produced more microstructure elements than the younger group. However, the methodology might have biased the findings. First, the questions mainly focused on asking about macrostructure elements (e.g., Who was the story about?). Perhaps not surprisingly then, questions improved macrostructure quality but not microstructure. Second, the sample consisted of young children (4-6-years-old) for whom microstructure skills are still developing. It is not until approximately age 7 that children start producing fairly accurate and long grammatical sentences (Petty, 2016). This latter point is important for considering when children have the capacity to understand and use microstructure elements spontaneously in their narratives. Finally, a link was found between narrative performance and working memory based on digit span performance, however digit span has been found to be related to both working memory and language (Archibald, 2013), and hence may not provide an unbiased assessment of working memory when examining relationships with narratives. Links with language? The current study served to consolidate and extend Silva and Cain’s (2015; 2019) novel findings by addressing methodological issues with respect to the content of questions, ages of participants, and measures of working memory and language. In this study, we will evaluate the potential priming effects of questions on improving the quality of oral narratives. Questions were tailored to elicit information about the macrostructure or microstructure aspects of the story. We focused on 7- to 8-year-olds, because children this age are consistently using microstructure elements, in addition to macrostructure. Finally, measures of language and working memory commonly used in speech-language pathology research and practice will be administered to examine the relationship between narrative skills and associated measures.

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