Assessment of verb argument structure in children using a story retell task: comparing performance and potential clinical utility from unprompted responses versus graduated prompting

Background: Children with language impairment have particular difficulty with verbs and verb argument structures, (Thordardottir and Weismer, 2002; Ebbels, Van der Lely and Dockrell, 2007). A story retell task, (Murphy 2014, unpublished), ‘Captain Grey and the Greedy Aliens’ was designed to assess a range of verbs at sentence level. Following initial telling, graduated prompting was used to elicit responses on the target verbs not produced in the first telling. However, the use of prompting lengthened assessment time in a study of n=91 typically developing children using the tool and younger children in particular needed greater prompting, with concerns this affected their ability to attend Objectives: To further ascertain potential clinical utility of the tool. The current study aimed to identify whether a range of verb classes from across the target verbs were elicited on the first telling without prompting and whether scores from the initial telling were sensitive to development across the age range. Methods: Secondary analysis of data from 91 typically developing children aged 4:06 – 12:00. Correlations with age and scores from verb argument structure accuracy and mean sentence complexity from data with prompting and initial unprompted telling were compared. Results: Verb argument structure accuracy (VAS) and mean sentence complexity (MSC) from the initial unprompted telling were moderately correlated with age. There was no statistically significant difference, (p = .652) (VAS%), (p = .148), (MSC), between the two conditions. A range of verb types were elicited Conclusions: Data from the first telling of this story retell tool without graduated prompting provides sufficient assessment of verb argument structure accuracy and mean sentence complexity in typically developing children, adding to its clinical utility as an assessment tool.