From discourse to literacy: narrative acquisition in dyslexics

Abstract

Background. The oral narrative is a valuable bridge from everyday conversation to printed stories comprehension; narratives are supposed to be essential prerequisites for reading development. Purpose. The study aims at (1) evaluation of narrative macrostructure in dyslexic (DY) and typically-developing (TD) children and (2) analyzing relations between reading skills and narrative measures. Design of the experiment. 12 DY children (mean age 118.9 months) and 12 TD peers (mean age 120.9 months) were assessed individually through (1) the standardized Reading Test for Russian-speaking Children and (2) The Russian Assessment Instrument for Narratives RAIN. Individual measures of the reading (reading speed score corrected by accuracy errors; the score for answering comprehension questions (CQ)) and the storytelling (story structure; episode completeness; the number of internal state terms; and the score for answering CQ) were estimated and analyzed. Results. Significant differences between the groups were revealed in the ISTs prevalence and the episode completeness of the storytelling. The DYs produced fewer emotional, cognitive and speech/conversation ISTs and used structurally less complete episode descriptions in comparison to the TDs. In the DYs, the ISTs' prevalence had a positive impact on the narrative macrostructure indexes and a comprehension of the written text; while in the TDs, reading speed score was influenced by the story structure. Conclusions. The results of the study confirmed that narrative competence is the key prerequisite for reading skills development.