The use of reported speech in children’s narratives: A priming study

Abstract

This study investigated the long-term effects of structural priming on children’s use of indirect speech clauses in a narrative context. Forty-two monolingual English-speaking 5-year-olds in two primary classrooms took part in a story-retelling task including reported speech. Testing took place in three individual sessions (pre-test, post-test 1, post-test 2) and the priming phase was conducted in 10 group priming sessions. During the priming phase the two classrooms were randomly allocated to one of two conditions where, over the course of two weeks, the children heard 10 different stories that included 30 tokens of either indirect or direct speech. In the pre-test session measures of receptive vocabulary (BPVS-3) and expressive grammar (Formulated Sentences sub-test, CELF-4-UK) were collected. There was a significant effect of input manipulation that was maintained for up to 10 weeks after the training. Expressive grammatical skills were positively correlated with the likelihood of using indirect speech one week after the end of the language intervention.