Decoding the macrostructural form of oral narratives in typically developing children between 6 - 11 years of age: Using story grammar analysis

Background: Oral narratives are an integral part of communication, which primarily develops during the early and middle-school years. The macrostructural form of narratives showcases the child's use of language, and the organization of the story and coherence. With only a handful of western standardized language assessment measures available to determine the narrative development in young children, there exists a dire need to develop culturally appropriate stimuli for the same. Aims: The present study aims to determine the macrostructural form of oral narratives in typically developing children between 6 -11 years using Story Grammar (SG) analysis. Methods: A total of 90 typically developing children aged 6-11 year-olds participated in the present study. The participants were allocated into 6 groups based on their age. The study was carried out in three phases. Phase I consisted of developing a picture sequence stimuli based on a SG framework; Phase II included the data collection process; while Phase III comprised of data and statistical analysis of the SG components. Results: The oral narratives were analyzed according to the SG model. Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk tests were done to determine the normality. The mean and SD was calculated for the SG components. Parametric tests were done to obtain the level of significance across and between the age groups. An inter-rater reliability was done to ascertain the reliability of scoring the samples. Conclusions: The present study provides a culturally sensitive task which can be used to assess the macrostructural form of oral narratives in young children.