Abstract
Previous research has highlighted that deaf children acquiring spoken English have difficulties in narrative development relative to their hearing peers both in terms of macro-structure and with micro-structural devices. The majority of previous research focused on narrative tasks designed for hearing children that depend on good receptive language skills. The current study compared narratives of 6 to 11-year-old deaf children who use spoken English (N=59) with matched for age and non-verbal intelligence hearing peers. To examine the role of general language abilities, single word vocabulary was also assessed. Narratives were elicited by the retelling of a story presented non-verbally in video format. Results showed that deaf and hearing children had equivalent macro-structure skills, but the deaf group showed poorer performance on micro-structural components. Furthermore, the deaf group gave less detailed responses to inferencing probe questions indicating poorer understanding of the story’s underlying message. For deaf children, micro-level devices most strongly correlated with the vocabulary measure. These findings suggest that deaf children, despite spoken language delays, are able to convey the main elements of content and structure in narrative but have greater difficulty in using grammatical devices more dependent on finer linguistic and pragmatic skills.
Highlights
Narrative is a powerful tool that all cultures possess for organizing and interpreting experience (Bamberg, 1997; Labov & Waletzky, 1967)
To account for the heterogeneity of the deaf children, within group differences on overall scores on the Narrative Production Test were investigated according to type of hearing amplification (CI vs. HA) and level of hearing loss, groups were matched on age and non-verbal ability
No significant difference in total Narrative Production Test scores were found between deaf children using cochlear implants (CIs) (N = 22; M = 34.5, SD = 10.14) and those deaf children wearing hearing aids (N = 37; M = 36.70, SD = 11.07; t (57) = −0.76 p = 0.45, Cohen’s d = 0.21)
Summary
Narrative is a powerful tool that all cultures possess for organizing and interpreting experience (Bamberg, 1997; Labov & Waletzky, 1967). This paper focuses on narrative development in oral deaf children and addresses a broad range of narrative skills at both the macro(global) and micro- (local) level. Higher-level language and cognitive skills are necessary to form cohesive, coherent and structured narratives (Bamberg & Damrad-Frye, 1991). These include the mastery of a variety of linguistic (lexical, syntactic and pragmatic) skills, the ability to remember and order in sequence a series of events, and to establish and maintain perspectives of a range of characters (Norbury, Gemmell & Paul, 2014)
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