Comparison of the narrative skills of monolingual turkish speaking children with typical development and developmental language disorder through MAIN-TR: Remote online narrative assessment

The aim of this study is to assess the narrative skills of Turkish-speaking monolingual children with Typical Development (TD) and Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) through, the most noteworthy assessment tool, the Turkish version of MAIN (Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives) remotely online and compare the both children group. For this purpose, a total of 128 Turkish-speaking monolingual children with typical development (n=96) and developmental language disorder (n=32) aged 45-89 months were included in the study. MAIN-TR was conducted remotely online in three narration modes; 'retelling, model story and telling', and the narratives produced by the children were assessed within the framework of macro structure. R program was used in the analysis of the data and for the between groups comparison, utilizing the lme4 package, a linear complex effects regression was used. The statistical analyses indicated that children with DLD received lower scores compared to those received by children with TD in the production (story structure and internal state terms) and comprehension sections of MAIN-TR. Age had a statistically significant effect on the total scores (except internal state terms) of the children in both groups; whereas, no such difference was observed with regard to gender. In the light of the findings, it was concluded that reinforcing the children with DLD aged between 49-89 months in terms of narrative skills will contribute positively to the language therapy process. Keywords: Narration, Typical development, Developmental language disorder, MAIN-TR, Macro structure, Age.