Examining Adolescent Language Performance in Discourse Production across Four Elicitation Tasks
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| Title: | Examining Adolescent Language Performance in Discourse Production across Four Elicitation Tasks |
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| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Adele K. Wallis (ORCID |
| Source: | Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools. 2024 55(3):838-852. |
| Availability: | American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. 2200 Research Blvd #250, Rockville, MD 20850. Tel: 301-296-5700; Fax: 301-296-8580; e-mail: lshss@asha.org; Web site: http://lshss.pubs.asha.org |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Page Count: | 15 |
| Publication Date: | 2024 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Reports - Research |
| Education Level: | Secondary Education |
| Descriptors: | Foreign Countries, Secondary School Students, Language Fluency, Language Skills, Adolescents, Connected Discourse, Dialogs (Language), Story Telling, Picture Books, Literary Genres, Personal Narratives, Verbal Communication, Verbal Tests, Emotional Response, Moral Issues, Assignments |
| Geographic Terms: | Australia |
| DOI: | 10.1044/2024_LSHSS-23-00163 |
| ISSN: | 0161-1461 1558-9129 |
| Abstract: | Purpose: Comprehensive spoken language assessment should include the evaluation of language use in naturalistic contexts. Discourse elicitation and analysis provides the opportunity for such an evaluation to occur. In this article, our overall aim was to describe adolescents' language performance on four elicitation tasks and determine if there are task-related differences across the elicitation tasks. Method: Forty-four typically developing adolescents with ages ranging from 12;2 to 17;11 (years;months; M = 15;2; 21 boys and 23 girls) participated in the study. They completed four spoken discourse tasks: (a) story generation using a wordless picture book, (b) fable retell, (c) six personal narratives in response to emotion-based prompts, and (d) monologic response to two stories that contained a moral dilemma. Responses were transcribed and analyzed for four language performance measures tapping into language productivity, syntactic complexity, lexical diversity, and verbal facility. Results: Despite individual variability in performance, mean scores were close to median scores for most measures, suggesting a symmetrical distribution. As expected, all four language performance measures were significantly different across the four elicitation tasks. The personal narrative task elicited the longest samples, with the highest verbal fluency. In contrast, both lexical diversity and syntactic complexity were the strongest in response to the fable retell and the moral dilemma tasks. Conclusions: This investigation provides speech-language pathologists with an overview of how task-related factors may impact adolescent language performance. These findings may be used to support their clinical decision-making processes in choosing a suitable discourse task when conducting a comprehensive spoken language assessment. Three hypothetical case examples are used to illustrate the decision-making process. |
| Abstractor: | As Provided |
| Notes: | https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.25761768 |
| Entry Date: | 2024 |
| Accession Number: | EJ1433297 |
| Database: | ERIC |
| Abstract: | Purpose: Comprehensive spoken language assessment should include the evaluation of language use in naturalistic contexts. Discourse elicitation and analysis provides the opportunity for such an evaluation to occur. In this article, our overall aim was to describe adolescents' language performance on four elicitation tasks and determine if there are task-related differences across the elicitation tasks. Method: Forty-four typically developing adolescents with ages ranging from 12;2 to 17;11 (years;months; M = 15;2; 21 boys and 23 girls) participated in the study. They completed four spoken discourse tasks: (a) story generation using a wordless picture book, (b) fable retell, (c) six personal narratives in response to emotion-based prompts, and (d) monologic response to two stories that contained a moral dilemma. Responses were transcribed and analyzed for four language performance measures tapping into language productivity, syntactic complexity, lexical diversity, and verbal facility. Results: Despite individual variability in performance, mean scores were close to median scores for most measures, suggesting a symmetrical distribution. As expected, all four language performance measures were significantly different across the four elicitation tasks. The personal narrative task elicited the longest samples, with the highest verbal fluency. In contrast, both lexical diversity and syntactic complexity were the strongest in response to the fable retell and the moral dilemma tasks. Conclusions: This investigation provides speech-language pathologists with an overview of how task-related factors may impact adolescent language performance. These findings may be used to support their clinical decision-making processes in choosing a suitable discourse task when conducting a comprehensive spoken language assessment. Three hypothetical case examples are used to illustrate the decision-making process. |
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| ISSN: | 0161-1461 1558-9129 |
| DOI: | 10.1044/2024_LSHSS-23-00163 |
