Exploring Microstructure Measures and Topics in Personal Narratives of Turkish School-Age Children: Findings From the Global TALES-TR Protocol.

backgroundThe Global TALES protocol is an internationally used personal narrative assessment tool designed to elicit and analyse children's personal narratives across languages and cultures.

aimThe aim of this study is to provide the Turkish literature with assessment data derived from typically developing (TD) children aged 7-10 years and to examine the applicability of the Turkish-adapted version within a Turkish linguistic and cultural context. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: This descriptive, cross-sectional study included eighty monolingual Turkish-speaking TD children, with 20 children in each age group (7-10 years). The Turkish-adapted Global TALES-TR protocol was conducted online with the children. The narratives were assessed for microstructure measures using the Turkish Research Version of the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) program. SPSS 22.0 and TURCOSA software were used for statistical analysis.

resultsSome age-related differences were observed in children's narrative microstructure, with significant contrasts between the youngest and oldest groups in verbal productivity and semantic diversity, while a more limited age effect was observed for semantic diversity between the age-8 and age-9 groups. Gender-related differences were limited. When the full sample was considered, a measure reflecting syntactic complexity showed a gender effect. Age-specific analyses indicated that gender-related differences in verbal productivity and syntactic complexity were observed only in the age-9 group. All observed gender-related differences favoured girls. The frequency of follow-up prompts and unanswered prompts showed that the 'problem' narrative was the most challenging for children. Narratives primarily focused on topics such as family, friends, school and success.

conclusionsThe results show that the adapted protocol can be used in personal narrative assessment. These findings may inform future research and clinical assessment practices. Furthermore, using this protocol, broader information can also be gathered about groups such as those with language disorders. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: What is already known on the subject Personal narratives provide rich information about children's language, discourse and communicative competence and are widely used in both research and clinical assessment. The Global TALES protocol has been developed as a cross-linguistic and cross-cultural framework to elicit personal narratives using emotion-based prompts and has been applied in multiple languages and cultural contexts. However, empirical evidence on personal narrative performance in Turkish-speaking children remains limited, and systematic data obtained using internationally comparable protocols are scarce. What this study adds to existing knowledge This study extends a previous pilot study by providing systematically analysed assessment data from a larger sample of TD Turkish-speaking children aged 7-10 years using the Turkish-adapted Global TALES protocol. The findings offer detailed information on verbal productivity, semantic diversity and syntactic complexity in Turkish personal narratives, including age-related patterns and limited gender-related differences. In addition, the study documents children's use of follow-up prompts and the narrative topics elicited by different emotional prompts, contributing cross-cultural data that can be compared with findings from other countries participating in the Global TALES project. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? The results provide reference data that may support speech-language pathologists in interpreting personal narrative samples from Turkish-speaking children aged 7-10 years. The study demonstrates the feasibility of using the Global TALES protocol in Turkish, offering clinicians a culturally sensitive and internationally comparable framework for narrative assessment. The findings may inform clinical decision-making, assessment planning and future research involving children with language disorders or learning difficulties.