Abstract
Purpose: Oral discourse comprehension is a fundamental skill that is predictive of future reading comprehension. The ability to identify important semantic propositions, in a narrative text, and their attachment to a mental model is an essential component of discourse comprehension. This study aimed to pilot a measure of free-recall in a narrative retell across three age groups to explore development. A secondary aim compared measures of free-recall and cued-recall.
Method: One hundred and thirty-two (132) typically developing children aged 4–7 years provided a retell of the Squirrel Story narrative and completed the Narrative Comprehension Assessment (NCA). The Squirrel Story Information Score (SSIS) was used as a novel measure of free-recall calculated from the narrative retells. The NCA, which involves literal and inferential comprehension questions, was used as a measure of cued-recall. Scoring reliability was calculated to ensure test–retest validity.
Result: Correlation analysis found excellent reliability of the SSIS measure. The difference between 4 and 5 year olds, and 5 and 6 year olds, was significant, with a large effect size. The difference between the 5 and 6 year olds was not significant. A large positive correlation was found between the measures of SSIS and NCA.
Conclusion: The measure of SSIS proved sensitive to developmental progression, with a positive relationship found between the measures of free-recall and cued-recall. Variability between the measures highlights the need to consider both measures to ensure an accurate representation of discourse comprehension skills.
Declaration of interest
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Supplementary material
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/17549507.2020.1745888.