The Influence of Narrative Intervention on Mandarin-Speaking Children at Risk for Developmental Language Disorder: A Pilot Study

Purpose: The purpose of this pilot study was to investigate narrative interventions for Mandarin-speaking children at risk (AR) for developmental language disorders and compare the effectiveness of one-on-one intervention (OI) versus group intervention (GI). Method: Twenty-eight AR children ( M age = 6 years and 4 months) were divided into OI ( n = 9), GI ( n = 9), and control ( n = 10) groups. We conducted a 4-week narrative intervention using the STEPS-STORY narrative therapy. We compared macrostructure (story structure, structural complexity), general microstructure (productivity, diversity, complexity, grammaticality), and fine-grained microstructure ( ba / bei , negation, classifiers, aspect markers). Results: The pilot study demonstrates that both OI and GI enhance the narrative abilities of AR children. The similarities lie in the fact that, in the posttest, both the OI and GI demonstrated score gains on the ba of the fine-grained microstructure, with large effect sizes observed in the OI group and small effect sizes in the GI group, relative to the control group. The differences are as follows: Compared to the control group, the OI outperformed the GI in several areas. In the posttest, the OI group showed score gains with medium effect sizes for total number of utterances, large effect sizes for total number of words, and small effect sizes for grammatically well-formed utterances within the general microstructure, as well as medium effect sizes for perfective aspect markers and progressive aspect markers within the fine-grained microstructure, all compared to the control group. In the follow-up test, the OI group demonstrated a small effect size in score gains for negation within the fine-grained microstructure relative to the control group. Conversely, compared to the control group, the GI group performed better in other areas. In the posttest, the GI group showed a small effect size in score gains for the number of different words (NDW) within the general microstructure compared to the control group. In the follow-up test, the GI group exhibited small effect sizes for structural complexity of the macrostructure and NDW of the general microstructure, as well as a large effect size for percentage of complex utterances of the general microstructure, relative to the control group. Conclusions: Narrative intervention has a positive impact on the narrative abilities of Mandarin-speaking AR children. The different modes of intervention service delivery (one-on-one vs. group) explored in this study have both similarities and differences in their effects on AR children. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.34818273