The Effects of Language Intervention Based on Story Mapping on Story Comprehension and Recall in Children with Mental Retardation

Cheon, Seon Hee; Kim, Jung-Mee

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2007;12(3): 429-446.

Seon Hee Cheon^` , and Jung-Mee Kim^`

천선희(Seon Hee Cheon)| 김정미(Jung-Mee Kim)

ABSTRACT

Background & Objectives
Story mapping is the intervention of a story-telling session by using grammar components to promote story comprehension. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of language intervention based on story mapping on story comprehension and recall for children with mild mental retardation.
Methods
Three children with mental retardation participated in this study. Intervention was conducted for 16 sessions and each session was composed of both probing and training. Each subject listened to the story the researcher told, and they were asked to retell the story and to perform comprehension tasks. After the completion of probing, the researcher told the subject a story, helped them to identify story grammar components, and assisted in the building of a story map.
Results
First, the children’s performance was improved in all comprehension tasks and their performance was also progressed after the story mapping intervention. Second, the children showed improvement in producing story grammar components during story retelling tasks that remained after completion of intervention. Third, the children showed that their recall in all components was improved, and that it was maintained after completion of the intervention.
Discussion & Conclusion
This study showed that story mapping intervention was effective in improving story comprehension and retelling for children with mental retardation.