he efficacy of Story Grammar Training in children with SLI: an efficacy study of narrative intervention as well as the establishment of the predictive value of executive and working memory ability on narrative scores
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2017-07-04
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en
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Topic and purpose. The goal of this thesis is to investigate the efficacy of Story Grammar Training (SGT) in improving narrative ability at the macro- and microstructural level, in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Additionally, several cognitive abilities of the same children are evaluated to see whether improvement took place. Further, this study is an initial attempt to investigate a predictive relationship between cognitive and narrative ability. Method. This study was conducted using data from clinical practice at Royal Dutch Kentalis in Utrecht and Eindhoven. Data was collected starting from the years 2013 to 2016. The subjects of the study were thirty-six children with SLI. Four groups were formed based on the frequency of SGT they had been given. Pre- to post-intervention comparisons of narrative and cognitive ability were conducted, as well as regression analyses to establish possible cognitive predictors of narrative ability. Conclusions. The results show that children with SLI, regardless of how many times they have received SGT, improve on several narrative variables in the story retelling task. These variables include plot score, MLU5 and the percentage of non-fluencies. Results further showed that some groups improved in the ability of cognitive flexibility and switching, as well as visual attention. It was established that for the group who had completed all sessions of SGT, the task for cognitive flexibility and switching could predict plot score and the mean length of utterance. These results suggest that there is a relationship between pre-intervention cognitive ability and post-intervention narrative scores, meaning that cognitive ability could, at least partly, influence how well the training is being learned. Recommendations. Further research is needed to ensure the efficacy of SGT, since there was little control over the groups who had not received SGT eight times, thus making it difficult to draw firm conclusions. It is recommended that more research should be done to establish the predictive relationship between pre-intervention cognitive ability and post-intervention narrative ability. Additionally, there should be more participants included who have received SGT eight times, as well as a possible control group which has received a different intervention method, for example to improve morpho-syntactic skills.
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