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Volume 25, Issue 1 (Spring 2023)
Advances in Cognitive Sciences 2023, 25(1): 123-136 |
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Research code: 84926
Ethics code: IR.MODARES.REC.1400.072
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Noori F, Ameri H, Noorian S, Aghagolzadeh F, Dabir Moghaddam M. Story grammar assessment in Persian narrative discourse test. Advances in Cognitive Sciences 2023; 25 (1) :123-136
URL: http://icssjournal.ir/article-1-1492-en.html
URL: http://icssjournal.ir/article-1-1492-en.html
1- PhD in Linguistics, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
2- Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
3- Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics, Faculty of Science, University of Qom, Qom, Iran
4- Professor, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
5- Professor, Linguistics Department, Faculty of Literature & Foreign Languages, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran
2- Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
3- Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics, Faculty of Science, University of Qom, Qom, Iran
4- Professor, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
5- Professor, Linguistics Department, Faculty of Literature & Foreign Languages, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract: (1225 Views)
Introduction
The present study was carried out to standardize the grammar of the story in the narrative discourse of Persian speakers with communication disorders for clinical examination. Psycholinguistic approaches have already been used in Iran to evaluate some aspects of discourse among people with speech and language disorders. The Persian Narrative Discourse Test (PNDT) was developed based on Fredericksen's model, and its validity and reliability were evaluated. This test is designed to quantify sentence complexity, coherence, and overall cohesion (referential, relational, lexical cohesion, deletion, and substitution). Since Fredriksen's model is suggested to investigate the damage levels of narrative discourse in the processing stage of conceptual structures, the evaluation of story grammar is also proposed. Accordingly, the present study aimed to include the evaluation scale of story grammar in the Persian version of the test.
Methods
Using a Likert scale to evaluate the narrative, a five-level questionnaire was used to measure the clarity of the elements of the four narrative parts using Thorndyke's hierarchical model: the scene is composed of time, place, and characters. The topic consists of the title of the narrative and the main incident. The plot consists of the characters’ efforts, the results of these efforts, the resolution consists of the characters' intentions, and the result of the narrative. In the above-mentioned questionnaire, six linguists and six speech and language pathologists were consulted to determine whether the proposed questions cover the observed behavioral domain (story grammar) and are simple and tangible for all examiners, and also whether the questionnaire has high content validity index based on the experts’ opinion. A second part of the research was conducted to determine the differential validity, examining story grammar as it relates to retelling stories and creating improvised narratives by two groups of elementary school students with and without hearing impairment in normal elementary schools. The reason for choosing the age of 6 to 12 years (primary school age) for this assessment is the evolution of the critical stages of narrative development at the end of five years of age so that children can organize integrated chains of events with a map and subsequent events and related endings. Thirty-six elementary students in regular schools were evaluated, including 18 students with hearing impairments (accessible sample) and 18 without hearing impairments (random sample). All hearing-impaired students had completed oral or verbal auditory rehabilitation for more than two years before entering the normal school assessment, and none had any physical, mental, movement, or psychological problems. Newsha tests were accomplished for hearing, language, and speech development, including listening skills, language comprehension, expressive language, speech clarity, cognitive skills, social skills, and motor skills. At least the low domain score was achieved to develop the desired skills in normal children. During the test, audiologists checked the hearing aids and cochlear implants of all children and verified that the device and its settings were correct. Children were homogeneous in terms of age, sex, socioeconomic level of schools, parents' education, and an intragroup comparison of hearing aid users, and cochlear implant users was made before the main assessment. No significant differences were observed in any of the two tasks between the two subgroups. A comparative assessment was conducted between two groups: One with hearing impairment and the other without. Data were collected by recording two oral narrative tasks, including telling a previously heard story and improvising a narrative. After transcribing, the data were entered into SPSS version 26 for statistical analysis. An internal evaluator and an external evaluator also evaluated the reliability of the test.
Results
A significant difference was found between the average scores of hearing and hearing-impaired participants in narrative creation and story retelling, and in both cases, the hearing group scored significantly higher than the hearing-impaired group. The current research compared the scores separately to determine where this difference comes from, as seen in Table 1.
Table 1. Comparing the average scores of the hearing (n=18) and hearing-impaired (n=18) groups by separating the parts of the story grammar
No significant difference was found between the average scores of hearing and hearing-impaired groups in creating a narrative or retelling the story in the scene and topic sections. However, in the episodes and resolution sections, the hearing group scores significantly higher than the hearing-impaired group.
Conclusion
A significant difference in the story grammar between retelling and improvising narratives aligns with research that shows hearing-impaired children, even with the aid of modern technology, continue to face challenges in advanced language usage. This is particularly evident when they create narratives compared to their peers with less severe hearing difficulties. A test developed based on Thorndyke's hierarchical story grammar model was found to be effective for evaluating the subsections of the story grammar by people with communication differences, and its validity and reliability were also confirmed.
Ethical Considerations
Compliance with Ethical Guidelines
In the current research, we adhere to ethical principles by obtaining written and informed consent from participants and providing them with essential information about the research process. We ensure confidentiality by coding participant names and allowing them the freedom to withdraw from the study at any time for any reason. The results of the tests carried out by each participant to their parents and the necessary guidance to improve children's narrative skills without imposing any financial costs. Moreover, the research has an approval code from the Ethics Committee of Tarbiat Modares University with code: IR.MODARES.REC.1400.072, Approval date: 2021-06-12.
Authors' Contribution
Design, data collection, and study preparation by the first and second authors. Statistical analysis by the third author. Supervised the research method by the fourth author and the final review by the second and fifth authors.
Funding
The authors have not received funding for this manuscript.
Acknowledgments
The present article is taken from the PhD thesis of the first author of the research at Tarbiat Modares University; therefore, the authors feel it is their duty to express their utmost gratitude for the sincere cooperation of all the students participating in the present study and their parents, as well as school administrators.
Conflict of interest
The authors reported no potential conflict of interest.
The present study was carried out to standardize the grammar of the story in the narrative discourse of Persian speakers with communication disorders for clinical examination. Psycholinguistic approaches have already been used in Iran to evaluate some aspects of discourse among people with speech and language disorders. The Persian Narrative Discourse Test (PNDT) was developed based on Fredericksen's model, and its validity and reliability were evaluated. This test is designed to quantify sentence complexity, coherence, and overall cohesion (referential, relational, lexical cohesion, deletion, and substitution). Since Fredriksen's model is suggested to investigate the damage levels of narrative discourse in the processing stage of conceptual structures, the evaluation of story grammar is also proposed. Accordingly, the present study aimed to include the evaluation scale of story grammar in the Persian version of the test.
Methods
Using a Likert scale to evaluate the narrative, a five-level questionnaire was used to measure the clarity of the elements of the four narrative parts using Thorndyke's hierarchical model: the scene is composed of time, place, and characters. The topic consists of the title of the narrative and the main incident. The plot consists of the characters’ efforts, the results of these efforts, the resolution consists of the characters' intentions, and the result of the narrative. In the above-mentioned questionnaire, six linguists and six speech and language pathologists were consulted to determine whether the proposed questions cover the observed behavioral domain (story grammar) and are simple and tangible for all examiners, and also whether the questionnaire has high content validity index based on the experts’ opinion. A second part of the research was conducted to determine the differential validity, examining story grammar as it relates to retelling stories and creating improvised narratives by two groups of elementary school students with and without hearing impairment in normal elementary schools. The reason for choosing the age of 6 to 12 years (primary school age) for this assessment is the evolution of the critical stages of narrative development at the end of five years of age so that children can organize integrated chains of events with a map and subsequent events and related endings. Thirty-six elementary students in regular schools were evaluated, including 18 students with hearing impairments (accessible sample) and 18 without hearing impairments (random sample). All hearing-impaired students had completed oral or verbal auditory rehabilitation for more than two years before entering the normal school assessment, and none had any physical, mental, movement, or psychological problems. Newsha tests were accomplished for hearing, language, and speech development, including listening skills, language comprehension, expressive language, speech clarity, cognitive skills, social skills, and motor skills. At least the low domain score was achieved to develop the desired skills in normal children. During the test, audiologists checked the hearing aids and cochlear implants of all children and verified that the device and its settings were correct. Children were homogeneous in terms of age, sex, socioeconomic level of schools, parents' education, and an intragroup comparison of hearing aid users, and cochlear implant users was made before the main assessment. No significant differences were observed in any of the two tasks between the two subgroups. A comparative assessment was conducted between two groups: One with hearing impairment and the other without. Data were collected by recording two oral narrative tasks, including telling a previously heard story and improvising a narrative. After transcribing, the data were entered into SPSS version 26 for statistical analysis. An internal evaluator and an external evaluator also evaluated the reliability of the test.
Results
A significant difference was found between the average scores of hearing and hearing-impaired participants in narrative creation and story retelling, and in both cases, the hearing group scored significantly higher than the hearing-impaired group. The current research compared the scores separately to determine where this difference comes from, as seen in Table 1.
Table 1. Comparing the average scores of the hearing (n=18) and hearing-impaired (n=18) groups by separating the parts of the story grammar
| Story grammar |
Mean | Std. Deviation | Std. Error Mean | Difference | Pooled St Dev | T | df | P | |
| Setting | |||||||||
| Improvising a narrative | Hearing Group | 0.490 | 0.279 | 0.066 | 0.130 | 0.261 | 1.49 | 34 | 0.145 |
| Hearing-impaired group | 0.360 | 0.243 | 0.057 | ||||||
| Telling a previously heard story | Hearing Group | 0.537 | 0.291 | 0.069 | 0.147 | 0.232 | 1.9 | 34 | 0.066 |
| Hearing-impaired group | 0.390 | 0.151 | 0.036 | ||||||
| Theme | |||||||||
| Improvising a narrative | Hearing Group | 0.440 | 0.509 | 0.120 | 0.205 | 0.388 | 1.58 | 34 | 0.133 |
| Hearing-impaired group | 0.235 | 0.205 | 0.048 | ||||||
| Telling a previously heard story | Hearing Group | 0.620 | 0.212 | 0.050 | 0.1 | 0.168 | 1.79 | 34 | 0.083 |
| Hearing-impaired group | 0.520 | 0.106 | 0.025 | ||||||
| Episodes | |||||||||
| Improvising a narrative | Hearing Group | 0.523 | 0.025 | 0.006 | 0.377 | 0.031 | 36.980 | 34 | 0.000 |
| Hearing-impaired group | 0.147 | 0.0135 | 0.008 | ||||||
| Telling a previously heard story | Hearing Group | 0.627 | 0.040 | 0.010 | 0.214 | 0.038 | 17.080 | 34 | 0.000 |
| Hearing-impaired group | 0.413 | 0.035 | 0.008 | ||||||
| Resolution | |||||||||
| Improvising a narrative | Hearing Group | 0.625 | 0.106 | 0.025 | 0.385 | 0.0756 | 15.280 | 34 | 0.000 |
| Hearing-impaired group | 0.240 | 0.014 | 0.003 | ||||||
| Telling a previously heard story | Hearing Group | 0.775 | 0.078 | 0.018 | 0.405 | 0.0683 | 17.790 | 34 | 0.000 |
| Hearing-impaired group | 0.370 | 0.057 | 0.013 | ||||||
No significant difference was found between the average scores of hearing and hearing-impaired groups in creating a narrative or retelling the story in the scene and topic sections. However, in the episodes and resolution sections, the hearing group scores significantly higher than the hearing-impaired group.
Conclusion
A significant difference in the story grammar between retelling and improvising narratives aligns with research that shows hearing-impaired children, even with the aid of modern technology, continue to face challenges in advanced language usage. This is particularly evident when they create narratives compared to their peers with less severe hearing difficulties. A test developed based on Thorndyke's hierarchical story grammar model was found to be effective for evaluating the subsections of the story grammar by people with communication differences, and its validity and reliability were also confirmed.
Ethical Considerations
Compliance with Ethical Guidelines
In the current research, we adhere to ethical principles by obtaining written and informed consent from participants and providing them with essential information about the research process. We ensure confidentiality by coding participant names and allowing them the freedom to withdraw from the study at any time for any reason. The results of the tests carried out by each participant to their parents and the necessary guidance to improve children's narrative skills without imposing any financial costs. Moreover, the research has an approval code from the Ethics Committee of Tarbiat Modares University with code: IR.MODARES.REC.1400.072, Approval date: 2021-06-12.
Authors' Contribution
Design, data collection, and study preparation by the first and second authors. Statistical analysis by the third author. Supervised the research method by the fourth author and the final review by the second and fifth authors.
Funding
The authors have not received funding for this manuscript.
Acknowledgments
The present article is taken from the PhD thesis of the first author of the research at Tarbiat Modares University; therefore, the authors feel it is their duty to express their utmost gratitude for the sincere cooperation of all the students participating in the present study and their parents, as well as school administrators.
Conflict of interest
The authors reported no potential conflict of interest.
Type of Study: Research |
Received: 2022/12/4 | Accepted: 2023/01/16 | Published: 2023/07/10
Received: 2022/12/4 | Accepted: 2023/01/16 | Published: 2023/07/10
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