UC Irvine

This dissertation investigated second graders’ oral discourse production regarding three aspects: 1) oral discourse production by discourse context, 2) dimensionality of oral discourse production, and 3) contributions of language and cognitive skills to oral discourse production. Data came from 330 second grade students (53% boys) from the Southeastern part of the United States, and oral discourse production was measured through picture description task which was transcribed verbatim and coded for linguistic (e.g., adverb, conjunction, pronominal, elaborated noun phrase, mental state talk) and discourse features (e.g., proper character introduction, degree of decontextualization, perspective taking). Study 1 examined how second graders vary linguistic and discourse features depending on discourse conditions: contextualized condition—describing the picture to an examiner while looking at it together—and decontextualized condition—pretending to describe the picture to a friend while sitting in front of the examiner. Results of multilevel regression showed that type-token ratio, higher degrees of decontextualization, and complex perspective taking were higher in the contextualized condition whereas some elaborated noun phrases, coordinating conjunctions, non-clauses, and proper character introduction occurred more frequently in the decontextualized condition, controlling for total productivity and student demographics. The findings illustrated the extent to which children used their discourse knowledge in oral discourse production. Study 2 looked at the factor structure of oral discourse production using a total of nine linguistic and discourse features identified from the same picture description task in Study 1. Results from confirmatory factor analysis showed that a bi-factor structure consisting of a general oral discourse production factor and two specific linguistic features and discourse features factors provided the best fit to the data. The only reliable factor was the general factor reflecting the common variance among the linguistic and discourse features. Study 3 investigated the structural relations of children’s domain-general cognitive skills (working memory, attentional control), foundational language skills (vocabulary, grammatical knowledge), and higher-order cognitive skills (knowledge-based inference, perspective taking, and comprehension monitoring) to oral discourse production. Oral discourse production was measured by the same picture description task as in Study 1. The results from structural equation models showed that domain-general cognitive skills and foundational language skills had indirect contributions to oral discourse production through the higher-order cognitive skill of inference, highlighting the supporting role of language and cognitive skills and their direct and indirect relations to oral discourse production.