Inferential Comprehension Difficulties in Young Children, Making the Invisible Visible Study

Global TALES Study

Much social interaction occurs in conversations; and most conversations involve telling our stories (or personal narratives). Telling stories about ourselves helps to cement friendships and to develop our sense of ourselves. For this project, an international team of researchers are investigating the quality of personal narratives in school-age children across different countries. From a clinical perspective, the results from this project will provide clinicians from around the world with much-needed knowledge and tools required for an objective evaluation of their clients' personal narrative skills. From a research perspective, the results will provide a better understanding of the association between personal narrative difficulties, and participation at home, school, and in the community. 

The overall aim of the Global TALES project is to describe the personal narrative abilities of children and adolescents across a range of language abilities, cultures, countries, and languages (Westerveld et al., 2023). Dr. Filiatrault-Veilleux (International Co-Investigator, University of Alberta, Canada) has been added as part of the external investigators team to use the English and French versions of the Global TALES protocol in Canada. 

Recruitment: we are looking for children to participate in our study who:

• are aged between 5 and 8:11 years, who do not have a history of speech and language difficulties; do not have a diagnosed hearing impairment; and speak English or French at home most of the time.

• are aged between 9:0 and 10:11 years, who speak English OR French at school and have received a diagnosis of DLD (or with significant language difficulties).

How to participate in this study:

To book an appointment for your child aged between 5 and 8:11:

• • French-speaking

  • English-speaking

To book an appointment for your child aged between 9 and 10:11:

• • French-speaking

  • English-speaking

To complete the consent form and questionnaires:

• • French-speaking

  • English-speaking

Please contact the lab at lclab@ualberta.ca if you have any questions.

Inferential Comprehension in a Narrative - Assessment: I.C.N.A. Study

Inferential comprehension, or the ability to understand information notstated explicitly, is fundamental to social participation and development of reading comprehension. Given that inferential comprehension abilities emerge early and play an important role in academic success, it is essential that Speech-Language Pathologists monitor its early development. The Inferential Comprehension in a Narrative – Assessment (ICNA) is the English version of The Evaluation de la Compréhension Inférentielle en Récit (ÉCIR). The objective of the ÉCIR/ICNA is to document oral inferential comprehension abilities in young children using a narrative-based approach. The validity and reliability of the assessment tool were confirmed for the original version in French (ÉCIR) (Filiatrault-Veilleux and Desmarais, 2020). This project aims to pilot the ICNA (English version) with neurotypical children aged 3 to 6 years and to compare the results with data previously collected with the ÉCIR (French version of the task). 

Recruitment: The purpose of this study is to pilot the English version of the Inferential Comprehension in a Narrative – Assessment (ICNA) task. In this task, children are asked to listen and to answer questions about a story presented on an iPad. We are looking for children to participate in our study who:

• are aged 3 to 6 years, who do not have a history of speech and language difficulties; do not have a diagnosed hearing impairment; and speak English at home most of the time.

Please contact the lab if you want to participate in this study or if you have any questions: lclab@ualberta.ca

Autistic Research on Writing Network (ARWN)

Inferential Comprehension and it's Relationship to Language and Cognitive Skills in 5-6 year-old French-speaking Children with Developmental Language Disorder