Narrative skills in deaf children who use spoken English: Dissociations between macro and microstructural devices.
Deaf children who use spoken English can share a clear plot but still need targeted help with grammar and inferencing details.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team asked deaf children who talk with spoken English to tell a story.
They compared the stories to ones told by hearing children of the same age.
The study looked at two parts: the big picture (macro) and tiny details (micro).
What they found
Deaf kids kept up with hearing peers on the big story arc.
They fell behind on small grammar pieces and on reading between the lines.
Mixed results: strong gist, weak detail.
How this fits with other research
Boons et al. (2013) saw the same split in kids with cochlear implants.
Newell et al. (2025) later found a near-copy of this pattern in Down syndrome.
Bao et al. (2017) also showed inferencing gaps in Down youth, proving the issue spans diagnoses.
Together the four papers say: macro skills can look fine while micro and inferencing skills still need work, no matter the label.
Why it matters
When you assess a deaf client, do not stop after a good story retell. Drill into grammar markers, connectives, and why questions. Add brief inferencing probes such as "How did the boy feel?" or "What might happen next?" These quick add-ons will show you where to place language goals and avoid surprise holes later.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Previous research has highlighted that deaf children acquiring spoken English have difficulties in narrative development relative to their hearing peers both in terms of macro-structure and with micro-structural devices. The majority of previous research focused on narrative tasks designed for hearing children that depend on good receptive language skills. The current study compared narratives of 6 to 11-year-old deaf children who use spoken English (N=59) with matched for age and non-verbal intelligence hearing peers. To examine the role of general language abilities, single word vocabulary was also assessed. Narratives were elicited by the retelling of a story presented non-verbally in video format. Results showed that deaf and hearing children had equivalent macro-structure skills, but the deaf group showed poorer performance on micro-structural components. Furthermore, the deaf group gave less detailed responses to inferencing probe questions indicating poorer understanding of the story's underlying message. For deaf children, micro-level devices most strongly correlated with the vocabulary measure. These findings suggest that deaf children, despite spoken language delays, are able to convey the main elements of content and structure in narrative but have greater difficulty in using grammatical devices more dependent on finer linguistic and pragmatic skills.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2016 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2016.09.010