Story grammar elements and causal relations in the narratives of Russian-Hebrew bilingual children with SLI and typical language development

Background: While there is general agreement regarding poor performance of children with
Specific Language Impairment (SLI) on microstructure measures of narrative production, findings
on macrostructure are inconsistent.
Purpose: The present study analyzed narrative abilities of Russian-Hebrew bilingual preschool
children with and without SLI, with a particular focus on story grammar (SG) elements and causal
relations, in order to identify macrostructure features which distinguish bilingual children with
SLI from those with typical development.
Method: Narratives were collected from 35 typically developing bilinguals (BiTD) and 14 bilinguals
with SLI (BiSLI) in both Russian/L1 and Hebrew/L2 using a retelling procedure (LITMUSMultilingual
Assessment Instrument for Narratives) (Gagarina, Klop, Kunnari, Tantele, Välimaa,
Balčiūnienė, Bohnacker, & Walters, 2012). Each story contained three episodes, and each episode
introduced a different protagonist with explicitly stated Goals (G), Attempts (A) and Outcomes
(O). Causal relations assessed included Enabling, Physical, Motivational, and Psychological relations,
following Trabasso & Nickels (1992). Each Goal-Attempt-Outcome (GAO) episode was
examined for the use of SG elements and causal relations. Results. Group differences emerged for
both aspects of macrostructure. For causal relations, narratives of BiSLI children contained fewer
Enabling and Physical relations, and differed qualitatively from those of BiTD children. For SG
elements, BiSLI children referred to fewer SG elements than BiTD children in the first episode, but
performed like BiTD children in the second and the third episodes.
Conclusions: Story grammar elements in specific episodes along with Enabling and Physical
causal relations distinguish the narratives of children with BiSLI from those with BiTD, which
stresses the importance of examining wider array of macrostructure features in narratives.