What question did this study set out to answer?

The study aims to examine narrative retelling abilities in Greek-speaking children with and without Developmental Language Disorder.

June 3, 2026Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics0 citationsOpen Access

Retelling skills of 10-year-old Greek-speaking children with and without Developmental Language Disorder

DBDafni Vaia BagiokaUniversity of Patras ETElena TheodorouCyprus University of Technology ATArhonto TerziUniversity of Patras

Key Points

The study aims to examine narrative retelling abilities in Greek-speaking children with and without Developmental Language Disorder.
Examined narrative retelling using the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN).
Included 50 Greek-speaking children aged 9-11, 25 with DLD and 25 neurotypical, matched for age.
Performed analyses using MANOVA, Generalized Linear Mixed-effects Models (GLMM), and Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analyses.
Children with DLD had significantly lower scores on Story Structure, Mean Length of Utterance (MLU), Subordinate Clauses, and Complement Clauses.
GLMM analysis indicated Story Structure and Complement Clauses significantly predicted group membership.
ROC analyses showed that Sentence Repetition is the most accurate diagnostic measurement, demonstrating high sensitivity and specificity.

Abstract

This study examined the narrative retelling abilities of Greek-speaking school-aged children (ages 9-11) with and without Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) using the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN). Addressing a gap in the literature, the study investigated group differences in macrostructural and microstructural narrative measurements and their diagnostic accuracy. Fifty children participated (25 DLD, 25 neurotypical), matched for age (mean = 10 years old). Analyses included correlations, MANOVA, Generalized Linear Mixed-effects Models (GLMM) and Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC). Although the overall MANOVA did not show a significant multivariate effect, children with DLD scored significantly lower on Story Structure, Mean Length of Utterance (MLU), Subordinate Clauses, and Complement Clauses. GLMM analysis indicated that Story Structure and Complement Clauses significantly predicted group membership, while ROC analyses confirmed that Sentence Repetition is the most accurate diagnostic measurement with high sensitivity and specificity. These findings suggest that narrative retelling provides valuable insights into the syntactic and discourse organisation in DLD, complementing the diagnostic measurements of structured language tasks.

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