Listener quality judgments of narratives produced by children with and without localization-related epilepsy

The purpose of this study was to examine if listeners perceive differences in the narratives of children with and without localization-related epilepsy, and if these differences are greater in children with a longer history of epilepsy. Listener ratings were compared cross-sectionally in two sets of comparisons: children with recent-onset epilepsy (CWE-R) compared to typically-developing peers (TD-R), and children with chronic epilepsy (CWE-C) compared to another set of typically-developing peers (TD-C). Listeners assigned significantly lower overall quality, vocabulary, story structure, and grammar ratings to narratives produced by CWE-C than to those produced by TD-C, but there were no significant differences between ratings assigned to narratives produced by CWE-R and TD-R. These results imply that continued seizure activity, and/or its management, may impact listener perceptions of expressive language skills in children.