Personal Narrative Assessment to Guide Clinical Practices in the Assessment and Support of Children With Developmental Language Disorder: A Tutorial

PURPOSE: This tutorial demonstrates how personal narratives elicited using the Global TALES (Talking About Lived Experiences in Stories) protocol can be analyzed using the four components of the Linguistic Underpinnings of Narrative in Aphasia (LUNA) framework for discourse analysis-pragmatics, macrostructure planning, propositional, and linguistic-in clinical practice to assess the language and communication skills of children with developmental language disorder (DLD). Such analysis can support diagnostic decision making or identification and monitoring of intervention goals related to the child's needs. Language measures that can be applied and interpreted in clinical practice are presented and linked to each of the four components of the LUNA framework. By understanding which measures correspond to these components, clinicians can identify the child's strengths and challenges across the four components to obtain a more complete view of the child's oral narrative production skills. An analysis of a personal narrative from a 7-year-old Danish-speaking child with DLD, elicited using the Global TALES protocol, was used to demonstrate in detail how to analyze personal narratives and interpret the results in a clinical setting using the LUNA framework. The case study also includes recommendations for supporting and monitoring the child's progress. CONCLUSIONS: This tutorial guides clinicians to integrate personal narratives as part of their assessment and treatment for children with DLD. The measures presented and discussed in the tutorial can help clinicians pinpoint interrelated discourse components and processes that need to be assessed and integrated into future support for a child's language development and overall well-being.