The relation between oral narrative production and literacy skills among children with Down syndrome

Abstract

This study examined the micro and macrostructures of oral fictional narratives produced by children with Down syndrome and examined the relation between oral fictional narrative skills and literacy skills within this population. Microstructure analysis revealed findings consistent with previous research regarding MLU-M and NDW. Further analysis of sentence complexity using the Narrative Assessment Protocol revealed a reliance on prepositional phrases and narratives that contained more nouns than verbs. Macrostructure analysis revealed the inclusion of concrete story grammar elements but lacked abstract concepts such as mental state references. Macrostructure was the only variable that came close to predicting reading comprehension, suggesting that metalinguistic awareness may be a better predictor of reading comprehension than microstructure analysis among children with Down syndrome. We conclude that strong correlations were found between literacy skills (word level reading and vocabulary) and narrative microstructure and macrostructure