Spoken fictional narrative and literacy skills of children with Down syndrome

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BackgroundChildren with Down syndrome (DS) exhibit below average nonverbal intelligence and impaired language skills; however, their spoken narrative production is a relative strength. AimsWe examined expressive language skills produced during fictional narrative retells and analyzed the unique contribution of expressive language skills to word-level reading and reading comprehension of children with DS. Methods and proceduresThe microstructure and macrostructure of fifteen, 8- to 18-year-old children with DS’s narrative retells were analyzed. Receptive vocabulary, word-level reading, and reading comprehension also were measured. ResultsNarrative microstructure analyses revealed restricted syntactic and semantic diversity. Further analyses of sentence complexity revealed that children with DS predominately produced prepositional phrases and produced more verbs than nouns. Narrative macrostructure analysis revealed participants use of episodic components; however, their stories did not include mental state references. Narrative microstructure contributed unique variance to word-level reading, whereas narrative macrostructure contributed unique variance to word-level reading and reading comprehension. Additionally, strong correlations were found between narrative skills and literacy skills. Conclusions and implicationsFindings from this study support the use of narrative microstructure and macrostructure analyses as a valuable clinical tool to guide assessment and intervention planning for school-aged children with DS.