Makrostruktur och kohesion i berättande hos 6-åringar med och utan epilepsi

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the narrative skill of sixyear- olds in terms of macrostructure and cohesion, and its relation to narrative content, auditory attention, auditory short-term memory and three measures of word retrieval. A group comparison of macrostructure and cohesion was also performed between children with and without epilepsy. The material consisted of audio recordings of 44 children (18 with epilepsy and 26 from a reference group) retelling the story Nelli-sagan (Holmberg & Sahlén, 2000). No correlation was found between content and macrostructure or cohesion, but several between the latter two. Auditory short-term memory and word retrieval without pictures showed several correlations with macrostructure as well as cohesion. No differences in macrostructure or cohesion were found between the children with epilepsy and the reference group. The importance of using more than one method of analysis to gain an overall view of a child's narrative skill is emphasized, as well as the necessity to individually adapt the narrative assessment in terms of elicitation and choice of text to make the child's narration as independent as possible.