Picture Description Performance of Normally Developing Children
Julia Stern · OhioLink ETD Center (Ohio Library and Information Network) · 2013
Aphasia is a communication disorder caused by damage to the areas of the brain involved in expressing and understanding language.Currently, speech-language pathologists who work with children with aphasia and/or traumatic brain injury use many tools that are designed for use with adults.One tool in particular is the Cookie Theft Picture, which is designed to elicit language samples that contribute to the diagnosis of a neurogenic communication disorder.Currently there is very little published research on the performance of children, either normally developing or with a brain injury, on the Cookie Theft Picture, limiting the usefulness of the Cookie Theft Picture as a diagnostic tool within pediatric populations.The current study aims to collect normative data for children describing the Cookie Theft Picture.Twelve children between the ages of 10;11 and 13;11 were given one minute to describe the Cookie Theft Picture.Resulting language samples were analyzed using three measures: mean length of utterance (MLU) was used as a measure of morphosyntactic development and growth; content units (Yorkston & Beukelman, 1980) were used to measure the amount of content conveyed; and content units per minute was used as a measure of efficiency of communication.No significant differences were found in these measures between age groups, grade levels, or gender.The mean MLU among the entire sample was 11.28 morphemes with a standard deviation of 3.18.The mean number of content units was 16.58, with a standard deviation of 3.40.The mean number of content units per minute was 16.38, with a standard deviation of 2.93.