Using Video Viewing to Evoke Hispanic Children's Narrative Samples

Background. Discourse or narrative sampling is used routinely to examine children’s language skills. Conclusions differ as a function of elicitation procedures. Some investigators suggest using multimedia with reconstruction tasks as a choice method. This study was a preliminary examination of the video, Frankenweenie, for narrative sampling to examine the language abilities of English-Spanish speaking and English-speaking children.

Method & Procedure. Participants were four normally developing 6 to 9-year-old Hispanic males (Mexican-American). After each narrative elicitation, subjects completed an attitudinal survey about the video.

Conclusions. All 4 children produced lower-level narratives in response to the video. Revision of the protocol is planned to determine the influence of different cues to increase use of episode elements.

Clinical Implications. The case studies were a first step for developing a video protocol for Frankenweenie as an alternative to The Frog Story and to examine the discourse skills of Hispanic children in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.