Clinical impact of wordless picture storybooks on bilingual narrative language production: A comparison of the 'Frog' stories.
BACKGROUND
Language sampling, recognized as a gold standard for expressive language assessment, is often elicited using wordless picture storybooks. A series of wordless storybooks, commonly referred to as 'Frog' stories, have been frequently used in language-based research with children from around the globe.


OBJECTIVE
To examine the impact that differences in stories have on narrative output by comparing narrative productions across a series of five storybooks produced by 831 bilingual (Spanish-English) children in kindergarten through third grade.


METHODS
Each participant produced oral narratives using one of the five Frog storybooks in both English and Spanish. The narratives were recorded, transcribed and coded for a variety of measures of language production.


RESULTS
Negligible differences were observed in language measures when comparing groups of children who told different stories, with the exception of lexical diversity.


CONCLUSIONS
The implications of using different storybooks to elicit narrative language samples from children are discussed from the perspectives of research and clinical practice.
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, USA.
John J
JJ
Heilmann
The University of Texas at Dallas, Dallas, TX, USA.
Raúl
R
Rojas
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA.
Aquiles
A
Iglesias
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA.
Jon F
JF
Miller
D001878:Books, Illustrated; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006630:Hispanic or Latino / Q000193:education* / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D007807:Language Tests; D007808:Language Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D033262:Narration; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011932:Reading; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D014481:United States
assessment; language sample analysis; narrative