Phrase-final words in Greek storytelling speech: a study on the effect of a culturally-specific prosodic feature on short-term memory

Prosodic patterns of speech appear to make a critical contribution to memoryrelated processing. We considered the case of a previously unexplored prosodic feature of Greek storytelling and its effect on free recall in thirty typically developing children between the ages of 10 and 12 years, using short ecologically valid auditory stimuli. The combination of a falling pitch contour and, more notably, extensive final-syllable vowel lengthening, which gives rise to the prosodic feature in question, led to statistically significantly higher performance in comparison to neutral phrase-final prosody. Number of syllables in target words did not reveal substantial difference in performance. The current study presents a previously undocumented culturally-specific prosodic pattern and its effect on short-term memory

Acquisition of narrative macrostructure : A comprehensive overview of results from the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives

In this paper, we give a comprehensive overview of the results from studies that have used the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) to investigate comprehension and production of narrative macrostructure (story structure) to date. We show the wide range of research in which MAIN has been used through summaries of core results from studies that investigated age effects, and studies that compared monolinguals with bilinguals, bilinguals' two languages, and typically-developing (TD) children with children with developmental language disorder (DLD). Results from studies including factors that influence bilinguals' narrative skills (e.g., language skills, language input) are also covered, as are those that deal with methodological aspects and more specifically, task effects, i.e., how the choice of elicitation mode (telling; retelling; model story) and story (Cat/Dog; Baby Birds/Baby Goats) influence story structure and story comprehension. As concluding remarks, we summarize the state-of-the-art of narrative research using MAIN and outline possible directions for future studies