Narrative ability in children with cerebral palsy
Pernille Holck1, Annika Dahlgren Sandberg, Ulrika Nettelbladt
1Department of Logopedics, University of Lund, Lasarettsgatan 19, SE-221 85 Lund, Sweden. pernille.holck@med.lu.se
Research in Developmental Disabilities
|November 3, 2010
Summary
Children with cerebral palsy (CP) struggle with narrative cohesion, impacting their ability to convey information. This study highlights potential causes and suggests targeted interventions using tools like the Narrative Assessment Profile (NAP).
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Linguistics
- Speech-Language Pathology
Background:
- Children with cerebral palsy (CP) exhibit significant challenges in narrative skills.
- Previous studies indicated deficits in the Information score of the Bus Story Test (BST) for children with CP.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the underlying causes of narrative difficulties in children with CP.
- To compare narrative performance between children with CP and typically developing (TD) children.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of Bus Story Test (BST) results for 10 children with CP (mean age 7;11).
- Supplemented BST analysis with the Narrative Assessment Profile (NAP).
- Quantitative analysis of linguistic features: word count, mazes, propositions, conjunctions, and story elements.
Main Results:
- A significant correlation between NAP's explicitness dimension and BST Information score in the CP group.
- Children with CP demonstrated limited cohesion and a scarcity of essential information in narratives.
- Typically developing (TD) children used more causal conjunctions than the CP group.
- A positive correlation was found between maze usage and BST Information score in the CP group.
Conclusions:
- Children with CP exhibit general problems with textual cohesion.
- The Narrative Assessment Profile (NAP) is a valuable tool for assessing narrative deficits in CP.
- Mazes, often seen as disfluencies, can aid word retrieval and information gathering for some children with CP.
