School-Age Children's Self-Assessment of Oral Narrative Production

Abstract

This study examined aspects of self-assessment, a metacognitive ability, and oral narrative production in 401 children between 5 and 12 years of age. Oral narrative production was evaluated through the administration of the Test of Narrative Language (TNL). Self-assessment of narrative performance was determined by asking children to self-evaluate their ability to “tell a good story” by pointing to one of five pictures from a “very happy face” (rating of 5) to a “very sad face” (rating of 1). Analysis of the data demonstrated that (a) older children (≥ 10 years of age) were more accurate than younger children in their ability to self-evaluate narrative performance; (b) there was a significant difference in narrative production skills between children who rated themselves as poor performers (self-rating of 1 or 2) and children who were high self-raters (≥ 3); (c) narrative self-evaluation varied in relation to gender, with males tending to more frequently overestimate their narrative ability; and (d) children with poor narrative ability were more likely to overestimate the quality of their narrative production than good narrators were. Clinical implications and future directions are discussed.