How Speech Production Affects Narrative Production in 4‐ to 6‐Year‐Old Children With Developmental Language Disorder and Poor Intelligibility

What is already known on the subject Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and poor intelligibility show difficulties in both speech production and in narrative production. More precisely, they often show problems in making sentences and in generating a coherent story. The occurrence of problems both at the sentence level and at the plot structure level has been subject to several studies in children with poor intelligibility with and without additional diagnosis of DLD. However, it is not clear how and if speech production is related to narrative abilities. What this paper adds to existing knowledge This study investigates the relationship between speech production and narrative production. The results reveal an indirect relationship between speech production and narrative coherence in children with DLD and poor intelligibility. These children are hampered in telling coherent stories because their speech production problems result in poor word structures, partly used to form cohesive sentences. Using sentences with sufficient cohesion is a necessary condition for realising a coherent story. Speech analysis of spontaneous language results in a varied set of daily used words in sentences and might thus best reflect a child's capacity in speech production. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? The results of this research suggest the importance of assessing narrative skills in children with DLD and poor intelligibility because these children experience both problems at the level of narrative cohesion as on narrative coherence.