Miroslava Nováková Schöffelová’s scientific contributions

Comprehension of (picture) stories as part of the development of preschool children's narrative skills Introduction: This study investigates the comprehension of picture stories in typically developing Czech-speaking children aged 3-6 years. Aim: The aim of the study was to observe the development of story comprehension in children aged 3-6 years, to map the level of comprehension at different ages, and to try to determine whether and how story comprehension, or the ability to infer the behavioral goals of story protagonists and their internal mental states, changes. Methodology: typically developing children aged 3-6 years (n = 74) were presented with stories depicted in picture sequences using the MAIN - Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (Gagarina et al., 2012) in a Czech adaptation (Gagarina et al., 2019b). Children were asked to (1) tell a story and answer comprehension questions; (2) retell a story presented by an administrator and answer comprehension questions. In this study, children's responses to standardized questions mapping the ability to infer the behavioral goals of the story protagonists and their internal mental states were analyzed. Descriptive analyses were conducted to determine the overall level of comprehension, the effect of age was observed, and the performances of different age groups were compared. Subsequently, the results for each of the observed story components were compared across and within age categories and further research directions were suggested. Results: The results support the assumption that in a group of preschool children the ability to understand stories increases with age. The research also suggests that age 4 may be a key point, especially in understanding the internal mental states of characters. Research has also revealed differences in understanding different aspects of stories. Children were most successful in understanding characters' goals, less successful in interpreting their internal mental states, and least successful in justifying them. No floor or ceiling effects were found in the treatment group, suggesting that the development of this skill continues to take place at a later age. Limitations: The study encounters several factors that could influence its outcomes. Firstly, the sample size could constrain the generalizability of the findings. Methodologically, the use of MAIN - Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives was pivotal, although considering additional assessment methods might provide a more comprehensive perspective. Another aspect of limitation was the age homogeneity, where specific developmental nuances might have been overlooked despite covering various age groups.

The article introduces the latest Czech version of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN). The first Czech version of MAIN was published in 2020 and was piloted in 2020–2021. Subsequently, a revised Czech version of MAIN was created. This article introduces this latest version of MAIN, describes minor changes to the manual caused by typological features of Czech and a specific cultural context, and presents sample analyses of the pilot data collected from typically-developing and hearing-impaired children. The results from the pilot study indicate that MAIN functions properly in the Czech context, in particular for preschool children. The results show that MAIN can be fruitfully applied to assess speech and language skills in hearing-impaired children in the Czech context.

Zralost a připravenost dětí na školu je velkým tématem učitelské i rodičovské populace. Odborné kruhy diskutují o důležitosti jednotlivých složek školní připravenosti z různých úhlů pohledu. V tomto článku se zaměřujeme na připravenost dětí na čtení. Popisujeme a objasňujeme proces čtení jakožto dovednost vyžadující přípravu a určitý stupeň zvládnutí dovedností, které čtení předcházejí. Tyto dovednosti zasazujeme do kontextu psycholingvistického přístupu. Článek představuje, jaké dovednosti jsou podle tohoto přístupu důležité pro počáteční čtení, a na českých dostupných datech ukazuje, zda a jak dalece těmito dovednostmi děti na počátku čtení disponují. Dále předkládáme výzkumnou studii – obsahovou analýzu přípravného období učebnic počátečního čtení. Cílem studie bylo kvantifikovat a kvalitativně zhodnotit úlohy rozvíjející jednu z dovedností definovaných v úvodní části jako klíčovou pro počáteční čtení (konkrétně fonologické, resp. fonematické uvědomování). Metodou výzkumu je obsahová analýza učebnic počátečního čtení (živých abeced), v prvním kroku přípravného období, ve druhém kroku momentu seznámení s prvním grafémem. Výsledky poukazují na to, že zastoupení této oblasti v přípravném období živých abeced je minimální. Diskuse zasazuje zjištění do kontextu předškolního vzdělávání a navrhuje řešení, které by přineslo lepší kontinuitu v přechodu od preprimárního vzdělávání k primárnímu v oblasti čtení.

Narrative skills are an important area of a child's language development. They divulge the overall level of language skills and are often affected in children with language impairment. They also indicate overall cognitive maturity and may signify the level of some cognitive abilities, such as memory or attention. Narrative skills are also largely related to future school success, especially reading and comprehension of the read text. Therefore it is necessary to deal with this area of language by diagnosis and intervention. The aim of the article is to explain in more detail the essence of narrative abi-lities and to place them in the context of other abilities and skills. We attempt to show how these abilities can be diagnosed and what the progress is in the diagnostics of narrative abilities in the Czech Republic. Finally, we wish to present a new tool for measuring narrative abilities - the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN), which is current-ly an adaptation of the original English version, currently available in more than 70 languages.

Developmental dysphasia is one of the most common diagnoses encountered by clinical speech therapists. It is a diagnosis that brings with it a number of potential problems that the speech therapist has to solve. Dysphasia is not only about poor speech intelligibility, but also affects many other areas - vocabulary, morphology and syntax or language comprehension. One area that is less pronounced in relation to developmental dysphasia is the transmission of problems to written language - the high risk of reading and writing difficulties, which is much higher for children with developmental dysphasia than for intact children.The aim of this article is to highlight the relationship between developmental dysphasia and initial literacy in the context of domestic and foreign literature. We will try to summarize currently available knowledge on the effectiveness of intervention in skills that are responsible for initial literacy, and also encourage professionals from different areas to think about other possibilities of helping children with developmental dysphasia to prevent their failure in school skills. At the end of the article, a new edition of the stimulation program "Training of Language Skills by D. B. Elkonin" and its practical application in the Czech Republic at the present time will be presented.