Devan Reische; Cecily Froerer; Serina Mumford; Teigan Beck; Sarai Holbrook, Utah State University
The purpose of this study is to determine whether a measure of holistic quality of narrative abilities aligns with scores obtained on a standardized measure of narrative proficiency in typically developing children. Scores on the Holistic Assessment of Narrative Discourse (HAND; Holbrook, Beck, Reische, Froerer, Mumford, & Gillam, 2017) rubric were compared to scores on the Test of Narrative Language- Second Edition (TNL- 2; Gillam & Pearson, 2017). The results of this study may help us to inform our assessment of children with developmental language impairment by understanding how methods for quantifying narrative proficiency differ qualitatively and quantitatively. The rubric used in the current study was designed after one proposed by McFadden & Gillam (1996) who used a holistic quality rubric to characterize stories of students with and without language impairments. A total of 260 typically developing children participated in the study. There were 42, 4 year olds, 57, 5 year olds, 68, 6 year olds and 93, 7 year olds. The children were part of the normative sample for the Test of Narrative Language-2 (Gillam & Pearson, 2017). The children were asked to retell a story after a sample narrative, tell a story based on sequenced pictures after a sample narrative, and develop a story based on a picture following a sample narrative. Stories were transcribed by Utah State University research assistants using Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT; Miller, 2002). The holistic scoring procedure was modeled after the McFadden & Gillam rubric in which narratives were independently rated by two reliable team members into six holistic quality categories. The HAND was created to measure overall aesthetic quality of narratives told by children as an adjunct to the TNL-2. The rubric uses a like scale of 0-5. We hypothesize that the HAND will correlate with the TNL-2 for stories that score 4s and 5s or 0s and 1s. Stories that score 2s and 3s may not correlate highly with the TNL-2, and as such, the HAND may provide additional, useful information for clinicians to use in intervention planning. Aspects related to these scores indicate that the stories are incomplete, contain weak causal relationships, don’t contain endings, are boring, disorganized, confusing, contain too much detail or too little detail. These elements are not explored in detail on the TNL-2 and have been shown to be contributing factors to narrative proficiency in children with language impairments, or Autism Spectrum Disorders.