Özlem Ece Demir-Lira | University of Chicago (original) (raw)
Papers by Özlem Ece Demir-Lira
Applied Psycholinguistics, 2010
Young children produce gestures to disambiguate arguments. This study explores whether the gestur... more Young children produce gestures to disambiguate arguments. This study explores whether the gestures they produce are constrained by discourse-pragmatic principles: person and information status. We ask whether children use gesture more often to indicate the referents that have to be specified, i.e., 3(rd) person and new referents, than the referents that do not have to be specified, i.e., 1(st)/2(nd) person and given referents. Chinese- and English-speaking children were videotaped while interacting spontaneously with adults, and their speech and gestures were coded for referential expressions. We found that both groups of children tended to use nouns when indicating 3(rd) person and new referents but pronouns or null arguments when indicating 1(st)/2(nd) person and given referents. They also produced gestures more often when indicating 3(rd) person and new referents, particularly when those referents were ambiguously conveyed by less explicit referring expressions (pronouns, null arguments). Thus Chinese- and English-speaking children show sensitivity to discourse-pragmatic principles not only in speech but also in gesture.
We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the neural predictors of math dev... more We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the neural predictors of math development, and asked whether these predictors vary as a function of parental socioeconomic status (SES) in children ranging in age from 8 to 13 years. We independently localized brain regions subserving verbal versus spatial processing in order to characterize relations between activation in these regions during an arithmetic task and long-term change in math skill (up to 3 years). Neural predictors of math gains encompassed brain regions subserving both verbal and spatial processing, but the relation between relative reliance on these regions and math skill growth varied depending on parental SES. Activity in an area of the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) identified by the verbal localizer was related to greater growth in math skill at the higher end of the SES continuum, but lesser improvements at the lower end. Activity in an area of the right superior parietal cortex identified by the spatial localizer was related to greater growth in math skill at the lower end of the SES continuum, but lesser improvements at the higher end. Results highlight early neural mechanisms as possible neuromarkers of long-term arithmetic learning and suggest that neural predictors of math gains vary with parental SES. Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org June 2016 | Volume 7 | Article 892 1 Fifteen of the children included in the current study overlapped with the previous Demir et al. (2015) study examining concurrent relations between math skill and parental SES and neural basis of arithmetic performance.
Low socioeconomic status (SES) has been repeatedly linked with decreased academic achievement, in... more Low socioeconomic status (SES) has been repeatedly linked with decreased academic achievement, including lower reading outcomes. Some lower SES children do show skills and scores commensurate with those of their higher SES peers, but whether their abilities stem from the same systems as high SES children or are based on divergent strategies is unknown. We here investigated a potential interactive relationship between SES and real-word reading skill in the white matter in 42 typically developing children. SES was determined based on parental education; reading skill and age were not significantly related to SES.
Neurobiology of Language, 2016
Child development, Jan 25, 2015
A literacy-related activity that occurs in children's homes-talk about letters in everyday co... more A literacy-related activity that occurs in children's homes-talk about letters in everyday conversations-was examined using data from 50 children who were visited every 4 months between 14 and 50 months. Parents talked about some letters, including those that are common in English words and the first letter of their children's names, especially often. Parents' focus on the child's initial was especially strong in families of higher socioeconomic status, and the extent to which parents talked about the child's initial during the later sessions of the study was related to the children's kindergarten reading skill. Conversations that included the child's initial were longer than those that did not, and parents presented a variety of information about this letter.
Child Development Perspectives, 2014
Although researchers have studied disparities in early language development related to socioecono... more Although researchers have studied disparities in early language development related to socioeconomic status (SES), it is unclear how early and through which mechanisms these differences emerge. As income inequality continues to widen across the world, it is crucial to examine the child-level mechanisms that mediate the effects of SES on individual differences in language development. A deeper understanding of the nature of the differences will allow development of more effective intervention techniques. In this article, we discuss work on child-level cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying the relation between SES and early language development. We discuss possible factors behind individual differences in child-level mechanisms and cascading effects of these differences. We conclude with recommendations for research.
This study examines the role of a particular kind of linguistic input––talk about the past and fu... more This study examines the role of a particular kind of linguistic input––talk about the past and future, pretend, and explanations, that is, talk that is decontextualized––in the development of vocabulary, syntax, and narrative skill in typically developing (TD) children and children with pre-or perinatal brain injury (BI). Decontextualized talk has been shown to be particularly effective in predicting children's language skills, but it is not clear why. We first explored the nature of parent decontextualized talk and found it to be linguistically richer than contextualized talk in parents of both TD and BI children. We then found, again for both groups, that parent decontextualized talk at child age 30 months was a significant predictor of child vocabulary, syntax, and narrative performance at kindergarten, above and beyond the child's own early language skills, parent contextualized talk and demographic factors. Decontextualized talk played a larger role in predicting kindergarten syntax and narrative outcomes for children with lower syntax and narrative skill at 30 months, and also a larger role in predicting kindergarten narrative outcomes for children with BI than for TD children. The difference between the two groups stemmed primarily from the fact that children with BI had lower narrative (but not vocabulary or syntax) scores than TD children. When the two groups were matched in terms of narrative skill at kindergarten, the impact that decontextualized talk had on narrative skill did not differ for children with BI and for TD children. Decontextualized talk is thus a strong predictor of later language skill for all children, but may be particularly potent for children at the lower-end of the distribution for language skill. The findings also suggest that variability in the language development of children with BI is influenced not only by the biological characteristics of their lesions, but also by the language input they receive.
We examined the relation of parental socioeconomic status (SES) to the neural bases of subtractio... more We examined the relation of parental socioeconomic status (SES) to the neural bases of subtraction in school-age children (9- to 12-year-olds). We independently localized brain regions subserving verbal versus visuo-spatial representations to determine whether the parental SES-related differences in children's reliance on these neural representations vary as a function of math skill. At higher SES levels, higher skill was associated with greater recruitment of the left temporal cortex, identified by the verbal localizer. At lower SES levels, higher skill was associated with greater recruitment of right parietal cortex, identified by the visuo-spatial localizer. This suggests that depending on parental SES, children engage different neural systems to solve subtraction problems. Furthermore, SES was related to the activation in the left temporal and frontal cortex during the independent verbal localizer task, but it was not related to activation during the independent visuo-spatial localizer task. Differences in activation during the verbal localizer task in turn were related to differences in activation during the subtraction task in right parietal cortex. The relation was stronger at lower SES levels. This result suggests that SES-related differences in the visuo-spatial regions during subtraction might be based in SES-related verbal differences.
Speakers of all ages spontaneously gesture as they talk. These gestures predict children’s milest... more Speakers of all ages spontaneously gesture as they talk. These gestures predict children’s milestones in vocabulary and sentence structure. We ask whether gesture serves a similar role in the development of narrative skill. Children were asked to retell a story conveyed in a wordless cartoon at age five and then again at six, seven, and eight. Children’s narrative structure in speech improved across these ages. At age five, many of the children expressed a character’s viewpoint in gesture, and these children were more likely to tell better-structured stories at the later ages than children who did not produce character- viewpoint gestures at age five. In contrast, framing narratives from a character’s perspective in speech at age five did not predict later narrative structure in speech. Gesture thus continues to act as a harbinger of change even as it assumes new roles in relation to discourse.
Narrative skill in kindergarteners has been shown to be a reliable predictor of later reading com... more Narrative skill in kindergarteners has been shown to be a reliable predictor of later reading comprehension and school achievement. However, we know little about how to scaffold children's narrative skill.
We examine the relations of verbal and spatial working memory (WM) ability to the neural bases of... more We examine the relations of verbal and spatial working memory (WM) ability to the neural bases of arithmetic in school-age children. We independently localize brain regions subserving verbal versus spatial representations. For multiplication, higher verbal WM ability is associated with greater recruit- ment of the left temporal cortex, identified by the verbal localizer. For multiplication and subtraction, higher spatial WM ability is associated with greater recruitment of right parietal cortex, identified by the spatial localizer. Depending on their WM ability, children engage different neural systems that manipulate different representations to solve arithmetic problems.
Language and Cognitive Processes, 2012
Speakers choose a particular expression based on many factors, including availability of the refe... more Speakers choose a particular expression based on many factors, including availability of the referent in the perceptual context. We examined whether, when expressing referents, monolingual English-and Turkish-speaking children: (1) are sensitive to perceptual context, (2) express this sensitivity in language-specific ways, and (3) use co-speech gestures to specify referents that are underspecified. We also explored the mechanisms underlying children's sensitivity to perceptual context. Children described short vignettes to an experimenter under two conditions: The characters in the vignettes were present in the perceptual context (perceptual context); the characters were absent (no perceptual context). Children routinely used nouns in the no perceptual context condition, but shifted to pronouns (English-speaking children) or omitted arguments (Turkish-speaking children) in the perceptual context condition. Turkish-speaking children used underspecified referents more frequently than English-speaking children in the perceptual context condition; however, they compensated for the difference by using gesture to specify the forms. Gesture thus gives children learning structurally different languages a way to achieve comparable levels of specification while at the same time adhering to the referential expressions dictated by their language.
![Research paper thumbnail of Dil ve İletişim Becerilerinin Gelişiminde Ebeyevnlik Etkileri [Effects of parental input on children’s language development]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/30477432/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Özlem ece Demir -Aylin c. KüntAy B ebekler, doğar doğmaz kendilerini insanlar arası iletişimin sü... more Özlem ece Demir -Aylin c. KüntAy B ebekler, doğar doğmaz kendilerini insanlar arası iletişimin süregeldiği bir ortamda bulurlar. Bebeklerle doğrudan konuşmanın çok yaygın olmadığı kültürlerde bile bebeklerin çevrelerinde gözlemleyebilecekleri etkileşimler gerçekleşir. İlk aylarda bu etkileşimlere katılımı kısıtlı gibi görünen bebekler, en geç 8-10 ay civarında şaşırtıcı bir hızla etraflarındakilerle işaret, bakış ve seslenmelerle iletişim kurmaya başlarlar. Dil gelişimi bir yaşam boyu devam etse de, sözcük ve cümlelerden oluşan sözlü dil üretimi çocuk 2-3 yaşlarındayken belirgin bir şekilde ortaya çıkar. Çocukta dil yetisinin gelişiminin temel evreleri evrenseldir; örneğin, çoğu bebek teker teker kelimeleri söylemeden önce karmaşık cümleler oluşturamaz. Öte yandan, bebeklerin dil öğrenme sürecinde, örneğin kelime üretmeye başladıkları yaşlarda, çeşitli cümle yapılarını öğrenme hızlarında bireysel farklılıklar gözlemlenmektedir (Fenson ve ark., 1994). Bu farklılıklar daha sonraki yıllarda görülecek olan okuma yetkinliğini, okul başarısını ve zihinsel becerileri öngörmek açısından da anlamlıdır (Cunningham ve Stanovich
To gain a full understanding of the steps children follow in acquiring language, researchers mus... more To gain a full understanding of the steps children follow in acquiring language, researchers must pay attention to their hands as well as their mouths – that is, to gesture. We first define our methodology for studying gesture. We then describe different types of gestures and their typical uses, and the methods by which meaning can be attributed to gesture. We stress the importance of characterizing the relationship between gesture and speech, and illustrate how that relationship changes over time as children’s spoken language develops. Importantly, the methods for coding and analyzing gesture in relation to speech also change over time, and we provide examples of these changes. We end by discussing gesture’s role in language learning and later stages of cognitive development.
Applied …, Jan 1, 2010
Young children produce gestures to disambiguate arguments. This study explores whether the gestur... more Young children produce gestures to disambiguate arguments. This study explores whether the gestures they produce are constrained by discourse-pragmatic principles: person and information status. We ask whether children use gesture more often to indicate the referents that have to be specified (i.e.,
third person and new referents) than the referents that do not have to be specified (i.e., first or second person and given referents). Chinese- and English-speaking children were videotaped while interacting spontaneously with adults, and their speech and gestures were coded for referential expressions. We found that both groups of children tended to use nouns when indicating third person and new referents but pronouns or null arguments when indicating first or second person and given referents. They also produced gestures more often when indicating third person and new referents, particularly when those referents were ambiguously conveyed by less explicit referring expressions (pronouns, null arguments).
Thus Chinese- and English-speaking children show sensitivity to discourse-pragmatic principles not only in speech but also in gesture.
Narratives are structured at a macro-and a micro-level. Coherence is macro-level organization of ... more Narratives are structured at a macro-and a micro-level. Coherence is macro-level organization of the narrative content, and cohesion refers to micro-level relationships between propositions. Adults structure their narratives not only in speech, but also through ...
Applied Psycholinguistics, 2010
Young children produce gestures to disambiguate arguments. This study explores whether the gestur... more Young children produce gestures to disambiguate arguments. This study explores whether the gestures they produce are constrained by discourse-pragmatic principles: person and information status. We ask whether children use gesture more often to indicate the referents that have to be specified, i.e., 3(rd) person and new referents, than the referents that do not have to be specified, i.e., 1(st)/2(nd) person and given referents. Chinese- and English-speaking children were videotaped while interacting spontaneously with adults, and their speech and gestures were coded for referential expressions. We found that both groups of children tended to use nouns when indicating 3(rd) person and new referents but pronouns or null arguments when indicating 1(st)/2(nd) person and given referents. They also produced gestures more often when indicating 3(rd) person and new referents, particularly when those referents were ambiguously conveyed by less explicit referring expressions (pronouns, null arguments). Thus Chinese- and English-speaking children show sensitivity to discourse-pragmatic principles not only in speech but also in gesture.
We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the neural predictors of math dev... more We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the neural predictors of math development, and asked whether these predictors vary as a function of parental socioeconomic status (SES) in children ranging in age from 8 to 13 years. We independently localized brain regions subserving verbal versus spatial processing in order to characterize relations between activation in these regions during an arithmetic task and long-term change in math skill (up to 3 years). Neural predictors of math gains encompassed brain regions subserving both verbal and spatial processing, but the relation between relative reliance on these regions and math skill growth varied depending on parental SES. Activity in an area of the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) identified by the verbal localizer was related to greater growth in math skill at the higher end of the SES continuum, but lesser improvements at the lower end. Activity in an area of the right superior parietal cortex identified by the spatial localizer was related to greater growth in math skill at the lower end of the SES continuum, but lesser improvements at the higher end. Results highlight early neural mechanisms as possible neuromarkers of long-term arithmetic learning and suggest that neural predictors of math gains vary with parental SES. Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org June 2016 | Volume 7 | Article 892 1 Fifteen of the children included in the current study overlapped with the previous Demir et al. (2015) study examining concurrent relations between math skill and parental SES and neural basis of arithmetic performance.
Low socioeconomic status (SES) has been repeatedly linked with decreased academic achievement, in... more Low socioeconomic status (SES) has been repeatedly linked with decreased academic achievement, including lower reading outcomes. Some lower SES children do show skills and scores commensurate with those of their higher SES peers, but whether their abilities stem from the same systems as high SES children or are based on divergent strategies is unknown. We here investigated a potential interactive relationship between SES and real-word reading skill in the white matter in 42 typically developing children. SES was determined based on parental education; reading skill and age were not significantly related to SES.
Neurobiology of Language, 2016
Child development, Jan 25, 2015
A literacy-related activity that occurs in children's homes-talk about letters in everyday co... more A literacy-related activity that occurs in children's homes-talk about letters in everyday conversations-was examined using data from 50 children who were visited every 4 months between 14 and 50 months. Parents talked about some letters, including those that are common in English words and the first letter of their children's names, especially often. Parents' focus on the child's initial was especially strong in families of higher socioeconomic status, and the extent to which parents talked about the child's initial during the later sessions of the study was related to the children's kindergarten reading skill. Conversations that included the child's initial were longer than those that did not, and parents presented a variety of information about this letter.
Child Development Perspectives, 2014
Although researchers have studied disparities in early language development related to socioecono... more Although researchers have studied disparities in early language development related to socioeconomic status (SES), it is unclear how early and through which mechanisms these differences emerge. As income inequality continues to widen across the world, it is crucial to examine the child-level mechanisms that mediate the effects of SES on individual differences in language development. A deeper understanding of the nature of the differences will allow development of more effective intervention techniques. In this article, we discuss work on child-level cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying the relation between SES and early language development. We discuss possible factors behind individual differences in child-level mechanisms and cascading effects of these differences. We conclude with recommendations for research.
This study examines the role of a particular kind of linguistic input––talk about the past and fu... more This study examines the role of a particular kind of linguistic input––talk about the past and future, pretend, and explanations, that is, talk that is decontextualized––in the development of vocabulary, syntax, and narrative skill in typically developing (TD) children and children with pre-or perinatal brain injury (BI). Decontextualized talk has been shown to be particularly effective in predicting children's language skills, but it is not clear why. We first explored the nature of parent decontextualized talk and found it to be linguistically richer than contextualized talk in parents of both TD and BI children. We then found, again for both groups, that parent decontextualized talk at child age 30 months was a significant predictor of child vocabulary, syntax, and narrative performance at kindergarten, above and beyond the child's own early language skills, parent contextualized talk and demographic factors. Decontextualized talk played a larger role in predicting kindergarten syntax and narrative outcomes for children with lower syntax and narrative skill at 30 months, and also a larger role in predicting kindergarten narrative outcomes for children with BI than for TD children. The difference between the two groups stemmed primarily from the fact that children with BI had lower narrative (but not vocabulary or syntax) scores than TD children. When the two groups were matched in terms of narrative skill at kindergarten, the impact that decontextualized talk had on narrative skill did not differ for children with BI and for TD children. Decontextualized talk is thus a strong predictor of later language skill for all children, but may be particularly potent for children at the lower-end of the distribution for language skill. The findings also suggest that variability in the language development of children with BI is influenced not only by the biological characteristics of their lesions, but also by the language input they receive.
We examined the relation of parental socioeconomic status (SES) to the neural bases of subtractio... more We examined the relation of parental socioeconomic status (SES) to the neural bases of subtraction in school-age children (9- to 12-year-olds). We independently localized brain regions subserving verbal versus visuo-spatial representations to determine whether the parental SES-related differences in children's reliance on these neural representations vary as a function of math skill. At higher SES levels, higher skill was associated with greater recruitment of the left temporal cortex, identified by the verbal localizer. At lower SES levels, higher skill was associated with greater recruitment of right parietal cortex, identified by the visuo-spatial localizer. This suggests that depending on parental SES, children engage different neural systems to solve subtraction problems. Furthermore, SES was related to the activation in the left temporal and frontal cortex during the independent verbal localizer task, but it was not related to activation during the independent visuo-spatial localizer task. Differences in activation during the verbal localizer task in turn were related to differences in activation during the subtraction task in right parietal cortex. The relation was stronger at lower SES levels. This result suggests that SES-related differences in the visuo-spatial regions during subtraction might be based in SES-related verbal differences.
Speakers of all ages spontaneously gesture as they talk. These gestures predict children’s milest... more Speakers of all ages spontaneously gesture as they talk. These gestures predict children’s milestones in vocabulary and sentence structure. We ask whether gesture serves a similar role in the development of narrative skill. Children were asked to retell a story conveyed in a wordless cartoon at age five and then again at six, seven, and eight. Children’s narrative structure in speech improved across these ages. At age five, many of the children expressed a character’s viewpoint in gesture, and these children were more likely to tell better-structured stories at the later ages than children who did not produce character- viewpoint gestures at age five. In contrast, framing narratives from a character’s perspective in speech at age five did not predict later narrative structure in speech. Gesture thus continues to act as a harbinger of change even as it assumes new roles in relation to discourse.
Narrative skill in kindergarteners has been shown to be a reliable predictor of later reading com... more Narrative skill in kindergarteners has been shown to be a reliable predictor of later reading comprehension and school achievement. However, we know little about how to scaffold children's narrative skill.
We examine the relations of verbal and spatial working memory (WM) ability to the neural bases of... more We examine the relations of verbal and spatial working memory (WM) ability to the neural bases of arithmetic in school-age children. We independently localize brain regions subserving verbal versus spatial representations. For multiplication, higher verbal WM ability is associated with greater recruit- ment of the left temporal cortex, identified by the verbal localizer. For multiplication and subtraction, higher spatial WM ability is associated with greater recruitment of right parietal cortex, identified by the spatial localizer. Depending on their WM ability, children engage different neural systems that manipulate different representations to solve arithmetic problems.
Language and Cognitive Processes, 2012
Speakers choose a particular expression based on many factors, including availability of the refe... more Speakers choose a particular expression based on many factors, including availability of the referent in the perceptual context. We examined whether, when expressing referents, monolingual English-and Turkish-speaking children: (1) are sensitive to perceptual context, (2) express this sensitivity in language-specific ways, and (3) use co-speech gestures to specify referents that are underspecified. We also explored the mechanisms underlying children's sensitivity to perceptual context. Children described short vignettes to an experimenter under two conditions: The characters in the vignettes were present in the perceptual context (perceptual context); the characters were absent (no perceptual context). Children routinely used nouns in the no perceptual context condition, but shifted to pronouns (English-speaking children) or omitted arguments (Turkish-speaking children) in the perceptual context condition. Turkish-speaking children used underspecified referents more frequently than English-speaking children in the perceptual context condition; however, they compensated for the difference by using gesture to specify the forms. Gesture thus gives children learning structurally different languages a way to achieve comparable levels of specification while at the same time adhering to the referential expressions dictated by their language.
Özlem ece Demir -Aylin c. KüntAy B ebekler, doğar doğmaz kendilerini insanlar arası iletişimin sü... more Özlem ece Demir -Aylin c. KüntAy B ebekler, doğar doğmaz kendilerini insanlar arası iletişimin süregeldiği bir ortamda bulurlar. Bebeklerle doğrudan konuşmanın çok yaygın olmadığı kültürlerde bile bebeklerin çevrelerinde gözlemleyebilecekleri etkileşimler gerçekleşir. İlk aylarda bu etkileşimlere katılımı kısıtlı gibi görünen bebekler, en geç 8-10 ay civarında şaşırtıcı bir hızla etraflarındakilerle işaret, bakış ve seslenmelerle iletişim kurmaya başlarlar. Dil gelişimi bir yaşam boyu devam etse de, sözcük ve cümlelerden oluşan sözlü dil üretimi çocuk 2-3 yaşlarındayken belirgin bir şekilde ortaya çıkar. Çocukta dil yetisinin gelişiminin temel evreleri evrenseldir; örneğin, çoğu bebek teker teker kelimeleri söylemeden önce karmaşık cümleler oluşturamaz. Öte yandan, bebeklerin dil öğrenme sürecinde, örneğin kelime üretmeye başladıkları yaşlarda, çeşitli cümle yapılarını öğrenme hızlarında bireysel farklılıklar gözlemlenmektedir (Fenson ve ark., 1994). Bu farklılıklar daha sonraki yıllarda görülecek olan okuma yetkinliğini, okul başarısını ve zihinsel becerileri öngörmek açısından da anlamlıdır (Cunningham ve Stanovich
To gain a full understanding of the steps children follow in acquiring language, researchers mus... more To gain a full understanding of the steps children follow in acquiring language, researchers must pay attention to their hands as well as their mouths – that is, to gesture. We first define our methodology for studying gesture. We then describe different types of gestures and their typical uses, and the methods by which meaning can be attributed to gesture. We stress the importance of characterizing the relationship between gesture and speech, and illustrate how that relationship changes over time as children’s spoken language develops. Importantly, the methods for coding and analyzing gesture in relation to speech also change over time, and we provide examples of these changes. We end by discussing gesture’s role in language learning and later stages of cognitive development.
Applied …, Jan 1, 2010
Young children produce gestures to disambiguate arguments. This study explores whether the gestur... more Young children produce gestures to disambiguate arguments. This study explores whether the gestures they produce are constrained by discourse-pragmatic principles: person and information status. We ask whether children use gesture more often to indicate the referents that have to be specified (i.e.,
third person and new referents) than the referents that do not have to be specified (i.e., first or second person and given referents). Chinese- and English-speaking children were videotaped while interacting spontaneously with adults, and their speech and gestures were coded for referential expressions. We found that both groups of children tended to use nouns when indicating third person and new referents but pronouns or null arguments when indicating first or second person and given referents. They also produced gestures more often when indicating third person and new referents, particularly when those referents were ambiguously conveyed by less explicit referring expressions (pronouns, null arguments).
Thus Chinese- and English-speaking children show sensitivity to discourse-pragmatic principles not only in speech but also in gesture.
Narratives are structured at a macro-and a micro-level. Coherence is macro-level organization of ... more Narratives are structured at a macro-and a micro-level. Coherence is macro-level organization of the narrative content, and cohesion refers to micro-level relationships between propositions. Adults structure their narratives not only in speech, but also through ...