Explicit Oral Narrative Intervention for Students with Williams Syndrome

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Linguistics
• Special Education

Background:

• Narrative skills are vital for academic and social development, integrating cognitive, social, and linguistic abilities.
• Students with Williams syndrome (WS) often exhibit challenges in narrative generation despite strengths in other areas.
• WS students' difficulties in narrative tasks can impact school engagement and literacy.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effectiveness of explicit narrative structure instruction on story retelling in students with WS.
• To assess the impact of a brief, individualized intervention on narrative microstructure and macrostructure.
• To investigate improvements in narrative productivity and complexity following targeted instruction.

Main Methods:

• Eight students with WS participated in a pre- and post-intervention assessment of TV cartoon story retellings.
• A brief, individualized intervention involved explicit instruction on narrative structure and discourse markers.
• Narratives were analyzed for microstructure (length, complexity) and macrostructure (coherence, sequence) using CHILDES tools and PREP-CORP.

Main Results:

• Significant improvements were observed in WS students' narrative retelling at both macro- and microstructure levels after the intervention.
• Microstructure measures, such as narrative length and complexity, showed greater gains compared to macrostructure.
• Sequential ordering within the narrative macrostructure did not demonstrate significant improvement.

Conclusions:

• Explicit oral narrative intervention can effectively enhance story retelling abilities in students with WS.
• Targeted instruction positively impacts narrative productivity and complexity, particularly at the microstructure level.
• Intervention strategies focusing on narrative skills are crucial for supporting school engagement in students with communication impairments.