Spontaneously generated narratives of children treated for posterior fossa tumour

Abstract

Sixteen children who had undergone treatment for posterior fossa tumour and 16 age-and sex-matched controls spontaneously generated a narrative in response to a character figurine. Narratives were analysed for story grammar composition, cohesion and developmental level. Although, as a group, the children treated for tumour performed significantly below the controls on a standardized language test, they produced narratives that were similar to those of their controls. Cohesive adequacy was the only narrative feature which revealed a significant difference in performance between subject and control groups. The children treated for tumour evidenced a higher percentage of erroneous cohesive ties in their narratives than did the controls, while the controls produced more complete cohesive ties than did the tumour subjects.