Poster #51 - Do African American Children’s Microstructural Abilities Predict Their Macrostructural Performance?

• In Event: Poster Session 06

Abstract

For African American children, oral narrative, or storytelling, skills emerge as a developmental competency from as early as preschool age (Gardner-Neblett & Iruka, 2015). These skills are foundational for early academic and social well-being (e.g., Spencer & Petersen, 2018) and are an ecologically valid and culturally-fair way of assessing African American children’s language skills (Mills, 2015). Research shows that African American preschoolers experience growth in both the macrostructural (i.e., overall structural organization of story content) and microstructural (i.e., sentence-level linguistic features) components of their oral narrative skill (e.g., Terry et al., 2013). While studies find that children’s lexical and syntactic abilities enhance narrative performance (Heilmann et al., 2010; Khan et al., 2021), it is unclear the extent to which microstructural components contribute to macrostructural performance among African American children. Furthermore, there are mixed findings on the role gender plays in African American children’s narrative performance with some studies finding that girls demonstrate greater oral narrative competence than boys (Gardner-Neblett & Sideris, 2017) and other studies finding the opposite (e.g., Sperry & Sperry, 1996) or no effects (e.g., Pinto et al., 2018). To address these gaps in the literature, the current study: (a) investigated the associations between the microstructural and macrostructural components of Black children’s oral narratives and (b) examined the role of gender in children’s narratives.

The study used existing data from a longitudinal study of the language development of 143 Black children [M (SD)= 6.13 (.82); 5 to 8 years old]. Children were presented wordless picture books from the Frog series (Mayer, 1967, 1969, 1973) and asked to tell a story. Children’s stories were recorded and transcribed using the Coding for Human Analysis of Transcripts conventions of the Children’s Data Exchange System (MacWhinney, 1996). Macrostructure was assessed based on the presence or absence of story grammar elements (i.e., setting, initiating events, internal response, goal plans and attempts, consequences, and resolution; 0-40 points; Stein & Glenn, 1979). Microstructural elements of narratives were computed using the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts software to assess the number of different words (NDW), mean length of communication unit (MLCU), and subordination index (SI).

Hierarchical linear multiple regression analysis revealed age, maternal education, and NDW as significant predictors of macrostructural performance, accounting for 21% of the overall variance (Table 1). NDW was the microstructural component associated with higher macrostructural performance. No significant effect of gender was found for both regression models, indicating boys and girls did not differ in macrostructural performance.

African American children’s use of different words in their narratives (i.e., lexical diversity) emerged as a key microstructural component in how well they structured the content of their narratives. There was no effect of gender, suggesting that gender did not contribute to narrative performance. Understanding individual differences in narrative competency is critical for supporting African American children’s development of this foundational skill.

Authors

• Atiya Iyaan Addie, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Presenting Author

• Nicole Gardner-Neblett, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor