The complexity of narrative interferes in the use of conjunctions in children with specific language impairment

Abstract

PURPOSE: To verify the use of conjunctions in narratives, and to investigate the influence of stimuli's complexity over the type of conjunctions used by children with specific language impairment (SLI) and children with typical language development. METHODS: Participants were 40 children (20 with typical language development and 20 with SLI) with ages between 7 and 10 years, paired by age range. Fifteen stories with increasing of complexity were used to obtain the narratives; stories were classified into mechanical, behavioral and intentional, and each of them was represented by four scenes. Narratives were analyzed according to occurrence and classification of conjunctions. RESULTS: Both groups used more coordinative than subordinate conjunctions, with significant decrease in the use of conjunctions in the discourse of SLI children. The use of conjunctions varied according to the type of narrative: for coordinative conjunctions, both groups differed only between intentional and behavioral narratives, with higher occurrence in behavioral ones; for subordinate conjunctions, typically developing children's performance did not show differences between narratives, while SLI children presented fewer occurrences in intentional narratives, which was different from other narratives. CONCLUSION: Both groups used more coordinative than subordinate conjunctions; however, typically developing children presented more conjunctions than SLI children. The production of children with SLI was influenced by stimulus, since more complex narratives has less use of subordinate conjunctions.

Correlações entre a produção de classes fonêmicas e classes gramaticais no Português Brasileiro

“…So, the child is capable to use the conjunctions after certain age, when he/she knows other word classes. One evidence of the conjunction complexity acquisition is a research showing that these words are still improving in the age of 10 (23) . The low occurrence of numerals in all age groups can be related to the absence of formal teaching of numeral concept, because this notion is learned in class in a later period.…”

Habilidades de aliteração e rima em crianças com distúrbio específico de linguagem

“…Children diagnosed with specific language impairment (SLI) have significant changes in the acquisition and development of language. They present, among other clinical manifestations, difficulty in acquiring new words, delay in working memory and in short-term phonological memory, common and idiosyncratic phonological processes, simplified and little varied grammatical structure and unusual ordering of words (3,(13)(14)(15) . The intrinsic relationship between oral and written language leads us to understand that the multiple changes in the spoken language of children with SLI, including the phonological representation, make them more likely to show changes in phonological processing and in reading and writing skills (7,16,17) .…”

O uso das conjunções por crianças com desenvolvimento típico de linguagem

“…Some authors consider that the typical language development starts when the child constructs phrases and simple forms and although it consists of two sentences, they contain only a single proposition and little marking grammatical (2,3) . Later, the child is able to use coordinative sentences and later, subordinating.…”

“…Later, the child is able to use coordinative sentences and later, subordinating. Thus, the additive conjunctions, expressing temporal, causal and opposite ideas relations begin to appear, and three years of age the child already use them flexibly, as it includes the syntactical rules (3,4) .…”

“…Other authors (3,7,8) believe that children, from 3 years of age, use more connective expressing spatial coherence of time sequence and most of the connectivity markers, such as conjunctions, which are used initially. Thus, for a well formed narrative, both in terms of cohesion and consistency, the use of conjunctions is important to develop the semantic-pragmatic skills, i.e.…”