A personal narrative intervention combined with self-monitoring strategies: Outcomes for Mandarin-speaking adolescents with Down syndrome

Abstract

Background

Personal narratives play an essential role in children's social and academic development. However, children with Down syndrome have ongoing challenges with constructing and communicating personal narratives.

Methods

Using a single-case multiple-probe across participants design, we examined whether a targeted intervention could improve both micro- and macro-structural aspects of personal narratives from Chinese adolescents with Down syndrome.

Results

All three participants demonstrated high treatment effects in two macrostructural narrative outcomes (i.e., narrative element complexity and narrative coherence) in response to the intervention and moderate to high treatment effects in the microstructural narrative outcomes (i.e., the mean length of utterance in words and the number of different words). However, all participants demonstrated limited improvements in narrative cohesion. These effects were maintained and generalised in a different narrative condition.

Conclusions

The preliminary findings support the feasibility and effectiveness of the personal narrative intervention incorporated with self-monitoring strategies for adolescents with Down syndrome.