Time to chat about everyone’s favorite age group…. TEENS (insert sarcastic “ha”)! Marilyn Nippold and her entourage from the University of Oregon have been turning to Aesop and his beloved fables to gather diagnostic data on adolescent language use. They gathered up a group of 30 teens, presented them with four fables and prompted them to retell the fables and subsequently reflect upon them (and they probably went out for drinks afterwards).
And so…. Nippold and her team found that with their fable task, adolescents produced more complex language than they do during conversational exchanges. They also found that asking teens to provide real-life examples and provide their opinions about the moral of the fable got them to put their critical thinking and social perspective-taking skills to good use. The full report includes the four fables and specific questions that were used in the research as well as the data on the length and complexity of the participants’ language use (specifically, total c-units, mean length of c-units, and clausal density). Upon analyzing the results, they found that gender differences were not apparent, but certain fables were more effective than others at prompting greater and more complex language use (“The Stag at the Pool” being the best).
Why the heck is this important? First of all, ANYTHING that gets teens to speak in more than single-word utterances is golden! Secondly, a single task that can elicit many different aspects of language gives us more bang for our buck. The preliminary data in the report can be used as a point of reference to aid in the assessment of language and the establishment of possible goal areas. Most importantly, Marliyn and her team are making contributions to our repertoire of normative data for teens. There’s just one major caveat to consider in all of this…. Using fables and their morals with teens does not ensure that they will behave in morally appropriate ways… sorry! Researchers are still scratching their heads on that one.
Resources:
The Brains: Marilyn A. Nippold, Laura M. Vigeland, Meghan W. Frantz-Kasper, and Jeannene M. Ward-Lonergan
Full Article: Nippold, M. A., Vigeland, L. M., Frantz-Kaspar, M. W., & Ward-Lonergan, J.M. (2017). Language Sampling With Adolscents: Building a Normative Database With Fables. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 26, 908-920.
http://ajslp.pubs.asha.org/article.aspx?articleid=2645245&resultClick=3
A collection of Aesop’s Fables:
http://www.taleswithmorals.com/
How to calculate c-units:
http://www.saltsoftware.com/coursefiles/shared/Cunits.pdf
SALT transcription software:
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