| Narrative language samples provide meaningful information about children’s language
skills. The type of stimuli used for elicitation may influence language sample qualities. The
purpose of this pilot study was to explore the impact of animated and static story stimuli on the
quality of children’s narratives and to evaluate the appropriateness of the selected stimuli for
future research. Six typically developing children, ages 9 to 12, viewed static and animated
stories and retold each story to an examiner. The resulting narratives were analyzed for story
structure, productivity, complexity, accuracy, and lexical diversity. Although no significant
differences were obtained, the trends in the data indicated that further research on animation and
its effects on narratives with a larger sample is warranted and may have clinical implications for
children with language disorders. Furthermore, the stimuli were deemed to have adequately
similar characteristics to be used in future studies.
Key Words: narrative, language sample, animation, language disorders |