title: Content and form in the narratives of children with specific language impairment.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  This project investigated the relationship of content and form in the narratives of school-age children.
  
  
  METHODS
  Two samples of children with specific language impairment (SLI) and their age-matched peers (British Columbia sample, M age = 9;0 [years;months], N = 26; Texas/Kansas sample, M age = 7;6, N = 40) completed the Test of Narrative Language (TNL; Gillam & Pearson, 2004). The relative strength of content elaboration and grammatical accuracy were measured for each child using variables derived from the TNL scoring system (Study 1) and from analysis of the story texts (Study 2).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Both studies indicated that, compared with age peers, the children with SLI were more likely to produce stories of uneven strength--either stories with poor content that were grammatically quite accurate or stories with elaborated content that were less grammatical.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These findings suggest that school-age children with SLI may struggle with the cumulative load of creating a story that is both elaborate and grammatical. They also show that the absence of errors is not necessarily a sign of strength. Finally, they underscore the value of comparing individual differences in multiple linguistic domains, including the elaboration of content, grammatical accuracy, and syntactic complexity.
authors.affiliation: The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. paola.colozzo@audiospeech.ubc.ca
authors.forename: Paola
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Colozzo
authors.forename: Ronald B
authors.initials: RB
authors.lastname: Gillam
authors.forename: Megan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wood
authors.forename: Rebecca D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Schnell
authors.forename: Judith R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Johnston
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D004519:Education, Special / Q000379:methods; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D007807:Language Tests; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D033262:Narration