What Makes a Good Story? A Latent Profile Analysis of Elementary School Students' Story-Retelling Ability

• In Event: Literacy Assessment

Abstract

Story re-telling is an oral language and cognitive task familial to children from many diverse cultural groups. 185 elementary school students (grades 4-6) completed several story re-tell tasks and a short term memory task as part of a digital literacy assessment. The current study investigated the extent to which young students’ story re-tell ability profiles differ by stimulus format (audio vs. text) and are predicted by short-term memory ability. We further examined whether the story re-tell profiles differ among students across different grades (4-6). Using latent profile analysis, a two-class solution was deemed the best fit: coherent story-retell and incoherent story re-tell. Further analyses revealed that short-term memory and grade had a moderating effect on profile membership.

Authors

• Samantha Dawn McCormick, University of Toronto

• Eunice Eunhee Jang, University of Toronto