Evaluación y descripción del discurso narrativo en LSE (Lengua de Signos Española)

Background

Narrative is an important achievement in language development. Children have to learn to coordinate grammatical, pragmatic and cognitive skills over a long period of time. Two related levels of information organisation are implicit in narratives: macrostructure and microstructure. The first refers to the overall organization of the content and the second refers to the linguistic resources, which enable connections to be made between the sub-events of the story to create coherence. There are studies on the oral language narratives of deaf children but little research on the narrative development of deaf children who use Spanish sign language.

Objectives

The aim of our study is twofold: on the one hand, to adapt the test of narrative production (TPN) from British sign language to Spanish sign language (LSE) and, on the other hand, to describe the development of narrative skills.

Method

A total of 46 protocols from 30 native signers aged between 4 and 12 years were analyzed.

Results

The results indicate a correlation between the three blocks comprising the test: content and structure (macrostructure) and grammar (microstructure). The development of the macrostructure components stabilizes at the age of 8 years, while in the microstructure a more progressive development is observed up to the age of 12 years.

Conclusions

The test will make it possible to assess children in clinical and educational settings, especially those children who, for various reasons, show atypical development in sign language.