Story narratives comprise much of daily communication'

1
Quantifying Story Goodness Development of a New
Narrative Discourse ToolKaren Lê1, Jennifer
Mozeiko1, Carl A. Coelho1, and Jordan Grafman2



1-University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT
2-National Institute for Neurological Disorders
and Stroke, Bethesda, MD
INTRODUCTION
METHODS
RESULTS
Figure 1
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Figure 3

• DISCOURSE ANALYSIS PROCEDURE
• Task After viewing a silent picture story,
  participants retold the story. Retellings were
  recorded and transcribed.
• T-unit segmentation involved identification of
  each independent clause and its associated
  subordinate clauses for each transcript.
• Story grammar analysis (organization)
• Story grammar was examined via episode structure.
  An episode consists of (a) an initiating event
  that prompts a character to formulate
  goal-directed behavior, (b) an action, and (c)
  direct consequence marking attainment or
  non-attainment of the goal.
• The primary measure of story grammar was the
  proportion of T-units within episodic structure
  score (T-units in episodes/total T-units in
  retelling) combining information regarding both
  episodes and T-units.
• Story completeness measure
• Inventory of key events and characters produced
  in each transcript of the normative sample was
  created.
• Pooled into a matrix across all non-brain-injured
  controls, inventory items clustered into 7
  distinct components.
• Inclusion criterion for critical component
• 80 of controls (range 83 - 98)
• 5 components found to be critical
• Each narrative reviewed for presence of 5
  critical components (1 point for each component).
• Completeness score total of critical
  components in each story
• DATA ANALYSIS
• Correlation coefficients were calculated for
  measures of story organization and story
  completeness.

• Story narratives comprise much of daily
  communication.
• Stories have unique elements woven into a
  cognitive structure governed by causal and
  temporal rules, guiding production and
  comprehension, referred to as story grammar.
• The meaningful organization of discourse is a
  reflection of story grammar.
• A good story narrative depends upon not only on
  adequate organization but also content adequacy.
• Hence, story grammar alone may not entirely
  capture goodness of story.

PURPOSE

• This study investigated an additional measure of
  story narrative performancestory completeness.
• The story completeness measure involves a tally
  of the critical story components mentioned by the
  storyteller.
• It was hypothesized that by combining
  organizational (story grammar) and completeness
  measures, story goodness could be quantified.

METHODS
Figure 7
DISCUSSION
Table 1 Participants

• When measures of story organization and
  completeness are combined, story goodness can be
  quantified.
• This measure proved to be sensitive in that it
  classified the story narratives of normal adults
  and TBI subjects into four distinct subgroups of
  story goodness with differing patterns of
  distribution.
• No major differences were noted in distribution
  between 1.5 SD and 2 SD. Different distribution
  patterns were observed between groups regardless
  of the cut-off points used.
• CONTACT karen.le_at_uconn.edu

• All participants were native English-speaking
  male Vietnam War veterans. individuals with TBI
  survived penetrating head wounds during the
  Vietnam War.