Abstract
This study investigated whether a dynamic visual presentation method (a soundless animated video presentation) would elicit better narratives than a static visual presentation method (a wordless picture book). Twenty mainstream grade 3 children were randomly assigned to two groups and assessed with one of the visual presentation methods. Narrative performance was measured in terms of micro- and macrostructure variables. Microstructure variables included productivity (total number of words, total number of T-units), syntactic complexity (mean length of T-unit) and lexical diversity measures (number of different words). Macrostructure variables included episodic structure in terms of goal-attempt-outcome (GAO) sequences. Both visual presentation modalities elicited narratives of similar quantity and quality in terms of the micro- and macrostructure variables that were investigated. Animation of picture stimuli did not elicit better narratives than static picture stimuli.
Highlights
This study fell within a quantitative, comparative, between-subjects paradigm and was guided by the following research question: What is the effect of two different visual presentation modalities, an animated video and a wordless picture book, on the narrative skills of mainstream grade 3 children?
This study reports data of 20 children who were part of a larger project (Engelbrecht, 2010) that investigated the effect of different visual modality and task conditions on the narratives of 29 grade 3 children in a mainstream school
The remaining data were segmented into T-units and coded for total number of words (TNW), total number of T-units (Tot T), number of different words (NDW), mean length of T-unit (MLT) and number of complete GAO sequences according to scoring protocols compiled by the researchers
Summary
This study investigated whether a dynamic visual presentation method (a soundless animated video presentation) would elicit better narratives than a static visual presentation method (a wordless picture book). Oral narratives allow clinicians to analyse multiple linguistic features, such as microstructural aspects, e.g. lexical diversity, and macrostructural elements, e.g. story grammar, using a relatively short language sample (Heilmann, Miller, Nockerts & Dunaway, 2010) It is, important to be aware of the different task and modality demands when selecting stimuli and procedures to elicit narratives that are valid representations of a child’s speech and language abilities (Boudreau, 2008). This study fell within a quantitative, comparative, between-subjects paradigm and was guided by the following research question: What is the effect of two different visual presentation modalities, an animated video and a wordless picture book, on the narrative skills of mainstream grade 3 children?. A compound sentence where two or more clauses are conjoined, e.g. The children played outside while their mother made supper, comprises two T-units
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