Multilingual Assessment Instrument For Narratives Research Articles

Identifying developmental language disorder (DLD) in multilingual children: A case study tutorial

Purpose A long-standing issue in identifying developmental language disorder (DLD) in multilingual children is differentiating between effects of language experience and genuine impairment when clinicians often lack suitable norm-referenced assessments. In this tutorial we demonstrate, via a case study, that it is feasible to identify DLD in a multilingual child using the CATALISE diagnostic criteria, Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) assessment tools, and telepractice. Method This tutorial features a case study of one 6-year-old Urdu-Cantonese multilingual ethnic minority child, and seven age- and grade-matched multilinguals. They were tested via Zoom using Urdu versions of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN), the Crosslinguistic Lexical Task (LITMUS-CLT), the Crosslinguistic Nonword Repetition Test (LITMUS-CL-NWR), and the Sentence Repetition Task (LITMUS-SRep). Result The child scored significantly lower in the LITMUS tests compared to her peers in her best/first language of Urdu. Together with the presence of negative functional impact and poor prognostic features, and absence of associated biomedical conditions, the findings suggest this participant could be identified as having DLD using the CATALISE diagnostic criteria. Conclusion The result demonstrates the promise of this approach to collect reference data and identify DLD in multilingual children. The online LITMUS battery has the potential to support identification of multilingual DLD in any target language.

Bilingual advantages in foreign language learning: evidence from primary-school pupils with developmental language disorder

IntroductionOne of the bilingual advantages often reported in the literature on typically-developing children involves advantages in foreign language learning at school. However, it is unknown whether similar advantages hold for bilingual pupils with learning disabilities. In this study, we compare the performance of monolingual and bilingual primary-school children with developmental language disorder (DLD) learning English as a school subject in special education schools in the Netherlands.MethodsThe participants were monolingual (N = 49) and bilingual (N = 22) children with DLD attending Grade 4−6 of special education (age 9–12). The bilingual participants spoke a variety of home languages. The English tests included a vocabulary task, a grammar test and a grammaticality judgement task. The Litmus Sentence Repetition Task and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test were used as measures of, respectively, grammatical ability and vocabulary size in Dutch (majority/school language). In addition, samples of semi-spontaneous speech were elicited in both English and Dutch using the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives. The narratives were analysed for fluency, grammatical accuracy, lexical diversity, and syntactic complexity. A questionnaire was used to measure amount of exposure to English outside of the classroom.Results and discussionThe results for Dutch revealed no differences between monolinguals and bilinguals on the narrative measures, but monolinguals performed significantly better on both vocabulary and grammar. In contrast, bilinguals outperformed monolinguals on all English measures, except grammatical accuracy of narratives. However, some of the differences became non-significant once we controlled for amount of out-of-school exposure to English. This is the first study to demonstrate that foreign language learning advantages extend to bilingual children with DLD. The results also underline the need to control for differences in out-of-school exposure to English when comparing bilingual and monolingual pupils on foreign language outcomes.

Subordination in Turkish Heritage Children with and without Developmental Language Impairment

A large body of cross-linguistic research has shown that complex constructions, such as subordinate constructions, are vulnerable in bilingual DLD children, whereas they are robust in bilingual children with typical language development; therefore, they are argued to constitute a potential clinical marker for identifying DLD in bilingual contexts, especially when the majority language is assessed. However, it is not clear whether this also applies to heritage contexts, particularly in contexts in which the heritage language is affected by L2 contact-induced phenomena, as in the case of Heritage Turkish in Germany. In this study, we compare subordination using data obtained from 13 Turkish heritage children with and without DLD (age range 5; 1–11; 6) to 10 late successive (lL2) BiTDs (age range 7; 2–12; 2) and 10 Turkish adult heritage bilinguals (age range 20; 3–25; 10) by analyzing subordinate constructions using both Standard and Heritage Turkish as reference varieties. We further investigate which background factors predict performance in subordinate constructions. Speech samples were elicited using the sentence repetition task (SRT) from the TODİL standardized test battery and the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN). A systematic analysis of a corpus of subordinate clauses constructed with respect to SRT and MAIN narrative production comprehension tasks shows that heritage children with TD and DLD may not be differentiated through these tasks, especially when their utterances are scored using the Standard Turkish variety as a baseline; however, they may be differentiated if the Heritage Turkish is considered as the baseline. The age of onset in the second language (AoO_L2) was the leading performance predictor in subordinate clause production in SRT and in both tasks of MAIN regardless of using Standard Turkish or Heritage Turkish as reference varieties in scoring.

Narrative abilities and grammaticality of Russian heritage children

Heritage language maintenance and development depend on the family language policy, language dominance, frequency of use, linguistic distance and similarities between the minority and the majority languages or (dia)lects of the society, as well as on the multi-directionality of cross-linguistic influence and accommodation. The present study investigates the narrative skills of Russian heritage children in Cyprus, with a focus on macro-structure (story structure, structural complexity and internal states terms) and grammaticality; that is, the extent to which utterances follow the grammatical rules of a language. The participants in the study were 40 Russian-Cypriot Greek (CG) simultaneous bilingual children; their ages ranged from 4;0 to 6;0 (mean 5;2 [years;months]), and they attended kindergartens and primary CG schools where the language of instruction was Greek. The Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN; Gagarina et al., 2012; 2015) was used for the data collection. The participants’ language proficiency in Russian was measured using the Russian Proficiency Test for Multilingual Children (RPTMC), while background information was obtained via parental questionnaires and interviews. The narratives were recorded, transcribed and analysed in terms of macro-structure and grammaticality. The analysis of the data showed that heritage children had errors in aspect, case, gender, morphological agreement, subject and object pronoun non-target production, as well as in innovative forms of words (nouns and verbs). There was non-standard production in terms of words order, prepositions and conjunctions. Overall, it was found that grammaticality was affected by proficiency in the heritage language, but there was no correlation with macro-structure measures. Narrative production and comprehension, macro-structure, were affected by the mode of narration.

The Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN): Adding Chuvash to MAIN

This paper describes the process of translating and adapting the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) to Chuvash. Chuvash is one of the largest minority languages in the European part of Russia. The Chuvash MAIN not only extends the empirical coverage of MAIN by including the only extant member of the Oghur (Bulgar) branch of the Turkic language family, but also offers an important tool to assess the narrative abilities of Russian-Chuvash bilingual children in their first language.

Adapting MAIN to isiZulu – some reflections on ecological validity

The Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) was developed as an instrument to assess the narrative skills of children in multilingual and multicultural contexts. The aim was to compile an instrument that is ecologically valid and culturally neutral so it can be used to assess children’s narrative skills regardless of their linguistic, socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. While storytelling occurs in all communities and cultures, storytelling customs may differ from culture to culture. For example, African storytelling is based on oral traditions passed on from one generation to the next. In the Zulu culture, which has a very rich anthology of folktales and oral traditions, stories are often used to teach moral lessons. This paper reflects on the possible challenges that clinicians may encounter when using MAIN to assess young children who may have only been exposed to traditional Zulu folklore stories that differ in structure from the MAIN stories. We also consider the Southern African Story Grammar model that was proposed by Tappe (2018) as a better reflection of African storytelling than the classical Stein and Glenn (1979) story grammar model. We discuss how some aspects of the MAIN stories and assessment procedures may not resemble the typical stories or storytelling customs in traditional isiZulu-speaking populations and therefore compromise the ecological validity of MAIN. In this paper, our focus is on isiZulu, but our questions about the ecological validity of MAIN may also be relevant for other language groups and cultures in the growing international community of MAIN users.

The Czech version of MAIN: adaptation, revision, pilot data from typically-developing and hearing-impaired children, and future steps

The article introduces the latest Czech version of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN). The first Czech version of MAIN was published in 2020 and was piloted in 2020–2021. Subsequently, a revised Czech version of MAIN was created. This article introduces this latest version of MAIN, describes minor changes to the manual caused by typological features of Czech and a specific cultural context, and presents sample analyses of the pilot data collected from typically-developing and hearing-impaired children. The results from the pilot study indicate that MAIN functions properly in the Czech context, in particular for preschool children. The results show that MAIN can be fruitfully applied to assess speech and language skills in hearing-impaired children in the Czech context.

Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives: Recent developments and new language adaptations

This volume contains ten papers that report on recent developments and new language versions of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN). Eight papers describe a MAIN language version, including the typological characteristics of the language, the cultural context in which the language is used, and the processes of translating and adapting MAIN to the language. Some also present results from pilot studies or summaries of already published studies where the language version was used. The two final papers report on research conducted with MAIN, and discuss important methodological issues, for example concerning different elicitation methods.

Acquisition of narrative macrostructure: A comprehensive overview of results from the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives

In this paper, we give a comprehensive overview of the results from studies that have used the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) to investigate comprehension and production of narrative macrostructure (story structure) to date. We show the wide range of research in which MAIN has been used through summaries of core results from studies that investigated age effects, and studies that compared monolinguals with bilinguals, bilinguals’ two languages, and typically-developing (TD) children with children with developmental language disorder (DLD). Results from studies including factors that influence bilinguals’ narrative skills (e.g., language skills, language input) are also covered, as are those that deal with methodological aspects and more specifically, task effects, i.e., how the choice of elicitation mode (telling; retelling; model story) and story (Cat/Dog; Baby Birds/Baby Goats) influence story structure and story comprehension. As concluding remarks, we summarize the state-of-the-art of narrative research using MAIN and outline possible directions for future studies.

Adapting the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives to Tamil

This paper reports on the adaptation of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) to Tamil. We first briefly provide an overview of the Tamil language and the Tamil population in the southern state of Tamil Nadu in India and then we describe in detail the multiple phases of the adaptation process including input from some pilot data from Tamil-speaking children.

Adapting the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) to Tibetan

This paper introduces the Tibetan version of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN). We describe the main typological properties of the Tibetan language, including word order, case markers, and evidentiality. Finally, the motivation for adaptation, the process of adaptation, and the challenges encountered are discussed.

The adaptation of MAIN to Maltese

This paper describes the process of adapting the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) to Maltese. The language-learning context in Malta is introduced, followed by an overview of the main typological characteristics of Maltese. A detailed account of the adaptation process is then given. Theoretical and clinical applications of the Maltese adaptation of the MAIN are discussed and current research projects in which the Maltese adaptation is being employed are briefly described.

Adapting MAIN to eliciting stories from adults and in a remote context: What do we have to consider, and what do we know?

The present study suggests guidelines for the successful elicitation of adults’ narratives using an online remote design. In doing so, I have adapted the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS MAIN) to an adult population and specify possible applications in a remote context. Hereby, I elaborate on various features that impact the elicited data and the testing context. I also report results from a pilot study with 10 adults telling MAIN stories using three different testing methods (two moderated methods using PowerPoint or an external link and one unmoderated) to argue that different methods of remote narrative elicitation do not influence the macrostructure of the narratives. However, by extending the analysis to the context of the testing and including the experimenters’ and participants’ assessments of the testing situation, we can see differences that lead me to recommend the so-called Link method (a moderated remote testing method with a certain degree of autonomy) for remote testing with adults.

Story telling in bilingual Urdu-Cantonese ethnic minority children: Macrostructure and its relation to microstructural linguistic skills.

The ability to produce a well-structured, coherent and informative narrative requires the integration of lexical and grammatical skills at different levels of complexity. Investigating how narrative macrostructure competence is predicted by microstructural linguistic skills is conceptually enlightening; yet there have been very few, if any, studies documenting the associations between macrostructure and microstructure in both languages of the same bilinguals. In this paper we attempt to address this research gap and report on the first empirical study of Urdu-Cantonese bilingual children's narrative abilities, bringing in data from a new language pair that is currently understudied. Twenty-four bilinguals (mean age = 9.17 years) acquiring Urdu as first, family and heritage minority language, and Cantonese as second, school and majority language were assessed via Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN). We examined these children's macrostructural competence and its relations to microstructural skills in both languages (Urdu and Cantonese). Three macrostructure components were scored as response variables: Story Structure (SS), Story Complexity (SC), Internal State Terms (IST). Four microstructural measures were scored as predictor variables: number of different words (NDW), mean length of Communication Units (MLCU), proportion of grammatical Communication Units (Gproportion), proportion of correct connectives linking the major episodic elements (Cproportion). In regression analyses, NDW emerged consistently as a positive predictor of SS, SC and IST in both languages. MLCU and NDW were positive predictors of SS in the stronger L1, but NDW was the only positive predictor of SS in L2. By contrast, NDW and an index of syntactic competence (MLCU in L1, but Cproportion in L2) were significant or close-to-significant positive predictors of SC in both languages. NDW was the only positive predictor of IST in both languages. These findings suggested that the relationships between narrative macrostructure and specific microstructural abilities could manifest both similarly and differently between L1 and L2. We discuss the findings by considering the unique nature of each macrostructure component and how each component might be related to specific microstructural linguistic skills. We suggest directions for further research and discuss how the current findings bring deeper implications for educators and clinicians in assessment, pedagogy, and intervention.

Left-behind experience and language proficiency predict narrative abilities in the home language of Kam-speaking minority children in China.

Studies have documented that child experiences such as external/environmental factors as well as internal factors jointly affect acquisition outcomes in child language. Thus far, the findings have been heavily skewed toward Indo-European languages and children in the Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic (WEIRD) societies. By contrast, this study features an understudied minority language Kam, and a group of so-called left-behind children in China growing up in a unique social-communicative environment. Fifty-five bilingual children aged 5-9 acquiring Kam as home language were assessed using the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS MAIN). Twenty-three "two parents-left" children (mean age = 6;8, range: 5;0-9;2) remained in rural areas while both parents went to cities for employment, and they were raised by their grandparents. Thirty-two were "one parent-left" peers (mean age = 7;3, range: 5;0-9;3) who also resided in rural areas but were raised by one parent. Oral narrative texts were analysed for macrostructure based on story structure (SS), story complexity (SC) and internal state terms (IS). The study examined whether and how narrative production is predicted by internal factors such as chronological age and linguistic proficiency of a child and an external factor such as left-behind experience. Four measures were scored as outcome measures: SS, SC, IS type, IS token. Four measures were taken as predictors: chronological age, left-behind experience, scores in a lexical production task, and scores in a sentence repetition task tapping expressive morphosyntactic competence. Results showed that left-behind experience consistently predicted all four outcome measures, where the "two parents-left" children scored significantly lower than their "one parent-left" peers. Expressive vocabulary scores predicted three measures: SS, SC, and IS Token. Expressive morphosyntactic scores predicted SS and SC. Age, by contrast, did not predict any outcome measure. These findings suggested that being left-behind by both parents may be a negative prognostic indicator for the development and maintenance of heritage language abilities in ethnic minority children. We further discussed the conceptual significance of what it means for a child to be left-behind, by relating to more basic external factors in language development, including caregiver educational level, and amount of home language and literacy support by the caretakers.

Case marking is different in monolingual and heritage Bosnian in digitally elicited oral texts.

Heritage languages may differ from baseline languages spoken in the home country, particularly in the domains of vocabulary, morphosyntax and phonology. The success of acquiring and maintaining a heritage language may depend on a range of factors, from the age of acquisition of the second language; quantity and quality of input and frequency of first language use, to non-linguistic factors, such as Socio-Economic Status (SES). To investigate case marking accuracy in heritage Bosnian in relation to these very factors, we recruited 20 heritage Bosnian speakers in Austria and Germany, and 20 monolingual Bosnian speakers in Bosnia, aged between 18 and 30 years. Participants were assessed remotely in two sessions, on a battery of tests that included a background language questionnaire investigating participants' history of language acquisition, current usage and SES, and a newly adapted Bosnian version of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN). A significant difference in case marking accuracy was found between the two groups, despite the 97% correct performance in the heritage speakers, and an almost 100% performance of the monolinguals. In the heritage speakers group only, errors indicated a trend toward case system simplification as well as uncertainty in distinguishing between case meanings. The use of Bosnian, assessed through quantity and quality of input, as well as frequency of current usage, was shown to be a significant predictor of case marking accuracy in heritage speakers. In contrast, SES and age of acquisition of German did not play a role in these participants' case accuracy. The observed patterns of quantitative and qualitative differences in the case marking accuracy between heritage Bosnian speakers and their monolingual counterparts, in the face of a high level of accuracy, contribute to our understanding of the heritage language attainment in more diverse language dyads where L1 is a lesser studied language.

Reference production in Mandarin-English bilingual preschoolers: Linguistic, input, and cognitive factors.

Reference in extended discourse is vulnerable to delayed acquisition in early childhood. Although recent research has increasingly focused on effects of linguistic, input, and cognitive factors on reference production, these studies are limited in number and the results are mixed. The present study provides insight into bilingual reference production by investigating how production of referring expressions in the two languages of preschool bilingual children may be influenced by structural similarities and differences between the languages, frequency of referring expressions in maternal input, amount of exposure to each of the languages, and working memory capacity. Using two stories in the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN), we examined character introduction and re-introduction in oral narratives of 4–6-year-old Singaporean bilingual children acquiring Mandarin Chinese and English (n = 21), and in child-directed speech of the mothers (n = 17). The children’s language exposure, executive function, and general bilingual proficiency were also recorded or directly tested through structured interviews with the parents or standardized assessments with the children. Data collection was conducted remotely in real time over a video-conferencing platform, supplemented by on-site audio recording to ensure sound quality. Results showed prolonged development in the production of felicitous REs for first mentions and over-reliance on overt marking of definiteness in our bilingual children. Mixed modeling revealed that frequency of felicitous REs in the input predicted children’s production of felicitous REs across languages and discourse functions, with a modulating effect of working memory. Overall, our findings are consistent with previous ones in that reference production is vulnerable in early Mandarin-English bilinguals in a multilingual society. This study also presents novel evidence that structural frequency in the input interacts with working memory in shaping patterns of reference production in bilingual children.

Age-Related Differences in the Expression of Causal Relationships During Narrative Production of Croatian Children

A successful narration relies on the ability of an individual to express a coherent sequence of temporally and causally related events organised around a specific theme, and this skill typically develops in early preschool age. Narrative coherence can be assessed by sequences or elements of story grammar. According to the causal network model, story grammar is viewed as an interconnected network of causal relationships, including enabling, physical, motivational, and psychological relationships. The importance of causal coherence has been recognised in many studies dealing with narrative discourse from the developmentalperspective. However, previous studies have reported inconsistent results with respect to the use of different types of causal relationships in the narratives of children of different ages. In the present study, we aimed to examine the differences between preschool and school children in their ability to express causal relationships, both overall and specific, in the narratives that they produce. Participants were monolingual Croatian-speaking children with typical language development, who were stratified into two groups: preschool (n = 41, mean age = 6;3 years) and school children (n = 50, mean age = 8;4 years). Narratives were collected using the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN), which was adapted to Croatian. The results show significant differences between the two groups of children in the overall proportion of causal relationships expressed, as well as specifically in the proportion of motivational relationships. There were no significant differences between the groups in production of enabling, physical, or psychological relationships. School children expressed more causal relationships overall than preschool children, as well as specifically more motivational relationships. As far as we know, this study is the first to investigate causality in the narratives of monolingual Croatian-speaking children using the causal network model. Our results only partially confirm the findings of previous studies, suggesting the need for further research to better understand the development of causal coherence in children’s narrative discourse.

Acquisition of referentiality in elicited narratives of Estonian-speaking children

Abstract This study addresses the acquisition of referential expressions in pre-schoolers’ narratives in Estonian. A total of sixteen 6- to 7-year-old typically developing monolingual Estonian children were tested using the story “Baby Goat” from the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) (Gagarina, Natalia, Klop, Daleen, Kunnari, Sari, Tantele, Koula, Välimaa, Taina, Balciuniene, Ingrida, Bohnacker, Ute and Walters, Joel. 2012. “MAIN: Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives.” ZAS Papers in Linguistics 56, 1–140, Gagarina, Natalia, Klop, Daleen, Kunnari, Saru, Tantele, Koula, Välimaa, Taina, Bohnacker, Ute and Walters, Joel. 2019. “MAIN: Multilingual assessment instrument for narratives – Revised.” ZAS Papers in Linguistics 63). The objective was to understand how children introduce a new referent and how they maintain referents in their storytelling, and what correlation could be observed between the length of the story and the average length of the reference chain. Qualitative analyses revealed that children generally introduced new referents using bare nouns; they also generally used bare nouns for further reference. NPs consisting of a noun and a determiner were more frequently used for main characters in the story, while bare nouns were preferred for other characters. The influence of the typological character of Estonian can be observed in the use of zero references and pragmatically driven word order in children’s utterances. In general, the length but not the complexity of the story was correlated with the average number of reference units in a chain.

Opportunities and challenges in the analysis of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN)

The development of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) has no doubt contributed to prompting a renewed interest in children’s narratives. This carefully controlled test of narrative abilities elicits a rich set of measures spanning multiple linguistic domains and their interaction, including lexis, morphosyntax, discourse-pragmatics, as well as various aspects of narrative structure, communicative competence, and language use (such as code-switching). It is particularly well suited to the study of discourse cohesion, referential adequacy and informativeness, and of course to the study of narrative structure and richness, and the acquisition of a more formal or literary register. In this commentary article, I reflect on the five empirical papers included in the special issue. I focus on methodological challenges for the analysis of narratives and identify outstanding questions.