Narrative Development in Aggressive Boys

Abstract

This study analyzed the oral narrative abilities of Caucasian males between the ages of 8.5 and 13 years who had been identified as aggressive. Language skills of aggressive preadolescent Caucasian males and a comparison group were examined by comparing the composite scores from the Test of Language Development-Intermediate (TOLD-I), a standardized test of expressive and receptive language, and its five subtests; narrative language measures of mean length of utterance (ML LS), number of different words, and number of total words; and social-cognitive measures coded as providing setting, plot, and outcome. For narrative samples, the boys constructed an oral narrative based on the wordless picture book Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969). Results indicate that the aggressive boys did not differ from the comparison group on the composite score of the TOLD-I. The aggressive boys were also significantly different from the comparison group on MLU, a measure of syntactic complexity. In their narratives, the aggressive boys provided fewer pieces of information to create the setting of the story for listeners than did the boys in the comparison group. Information from this study may be helpful in planning programs for children identified as displaying aggressive behaviors.