Brain-Injured Children Have Difficulty Telling Stories & Performing Other Complex Functions

A recent University of Chicago study suggests that brain-injured children lack some of the developmental skills that aid in story-telling, according to Science Daily.  While children with brain injuries were found to have similar vocabulary and sentence comprehension to that of non-injured children, those with brain injuries were found to have difficulty forming complex, lengthy stories.  Specifically, Özlem Ece Demir and other researchers studied children with brain lesions (areas of tissue damage) and compared them with children undergoing typical brain development.  All children in the study were asked to tell a story, prompted by a beginning sentence (such as "once there was a girl who had many dolls") and questions that spurred them to keep narrating.  In the analysis of the stories, the researchers found that vocabularity diversity and sentence structure were similar among all children (who were all just starting school), but the narratives of children with brain injuries were shorter and less complex than those of the other children.  The ability to tell a story is a complex activity for the brain because it requires flexibility in the use of words, say the researchers.  As a result, brain-injured children may suffer developmental delays in the area of creating narratives, raising questions concerning whether other complex brain functions may be affected as well.

If your child or an older family member has suffered a brain injury in Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Newport News, Hampton, Eastern Shore, or another part of Virginia, feel free to contact Virginia brain injury lawyer Lawrence Land for free resources, information on the latest brain injury and treatment news, and answers to your pressing questions.  Contact Land via his confidential contact form or by phone at 800-800-1911.