Tele-assessment of oral personal narratives in Arabic- and Hebrew-speaking children using the Global TALES protocol

Introduction: Tele-assessment has the potential to enhance access to speech therapy. This preliminary study aimed to investigate the impact of assessment mode [face-to-face (FTF) vs tele-assessment (TA)] on the microstructure level and chosen topics of personal narratives produced by Arabic-speaking and Hebrew-speaking school-age children living in Israel. We also investigated whether performance variations, if evident, could be attributed to the children’s language/culture. Methods: Eighty-nine 10-year-old children, 38 Arabic-speaking and 51 Hebrew-speaking, living in Israel, participated in this study. Forty participants were assigned to a TA group (via zoom) and 49 to a FTF group. All participants were assessed using the Global TALES protocol, generating six personal narratives each. The narratives were analyzed regarding the following microstructural measures: total number of words (TNW), total number of utterances (TNU), number of different words (NDW) and mean length of utterance in words (MLU-W). Additionally, each narrative was categorized into a topic according to the Global TALES protocol. Results: The analysis revealed no significant main effect of assessment mode on any of the microstructure measures. However, a significant interaction effect between language/culture and assessment mode was found for TNU and MLU-W, with a significant main effect for TNU exclusively in the Arabic narratives, with the Arabic-speaking children producing more utterances through FTF compared to TA. Across language/culture groups, there was a significant effect of assessment mode on the chosen topic. Additionally, there were significantly higher scores in the Hebrew compared the Arabic narratives in all microstructure measures, and language/culture also influenced the chosen topics. Conclusions: The results support the feasibility of TA mode for assessing personal narratives in school-aged children, using the Global TALES protocol. However, the results also suggest that TA results may be affected by the language/culture of the narrator. Finally, the findings highlight the potential influence of TA on the chosen topics of personal narratives, perhaps due to a decrease in the quality of communication in TA.