Stability of cohesion in the spoken narratives of language-impaired and normally developing school-aged children

The short-term stability of the cohesion scores for the spoken narratives of language-impaired and normally developing school-aged children was investigated. Narratives were obtained from 39 language-impaired and 39 normal-language children, aged 8-10 years, at four 2-week intervals. Reliability coefficients for scores from five measures--two for cohesive adequacy and three for verbal productivity--were of adequate magnitude for analysis. Mean cohesive adequacy scores were stable across narratives, but stability coefficients were only moderately large. Stability coefficients for verbal productivity scores were sufficiently large for research purposes; mean scores were most similar between testing Times 2 and 3, indicating that stability increased after children had experience telling stories.