Narrative Skills in Malayalam Speaking Young Adults and Geriatric

Sneha Aji; Sathish Kumaraswamy

Narrative Skills in Malayalam Speaking Young Adults and Geriatric

Author(s)	Ms. Sneha Aji, Dr. Sathish Kumaraswamy
Country	India
Abstract	Narrative skills are essential for effective communication and reflect an individual’s ability to organize, interpret and convey information meaningfully. Age related changes in cognitive and linguistic abilities may influence narrative performance across the lifespan. The present study aimed to assess and compare narrative skills in young adults speaking malayalam (18–35 years) and geriatric (60–70 years). The participants were assessed on narrative tasks under familiar and unfamiliar conditions focusing on three domains: trouble source, repair and resolution. The results were analyzed based on the frequency and percentage of correct and incorrect responses and chi-square analysis was used to examine group differences. The results indicated that in the familiar condition young adults showed higher correct responses in trouble source (60.0%) and resolution (66.7%) compared to geriatric individuals (43.3% and 40.0%, respectively) whereas geriatric individuals demonstrated better performance in repair (60.0%) than young adults (40.0%). Chi-square analysis revealed a statistically significant difference for the resolution domain (χ²(1, N = 60) = 4.29, p = .038), while no significant differences were observed for trouble source (p = .196) and repair (p = .121). In the unfamiliar condition young adults demonstrated higher correct responses for trouble source (76.7%) compared to geriatric individuals (56.7%) whereas geriatric individuals showed slightly better performance in repair (56.7%) and resolution (53.3%) than young adults (46.7% and 50.0%, respectively). However, these differences were not statistically significant (all p > .05). Overall, the findings indicated that young adults demonstrated relatively better performance in specific narrative domains particularly resolution under familiar conditions while most other differences between the groups were not statistically significant. The study provided important insights into age related variations for narrative skills and highlighted its clinical relevance in the assessment and management of communication abilities among Malayalam speaking populations.
Keywords	narrative skills, young adults, geriatric population, Malayalam speakers, pragmatic abilities, familiar and unfamiliar contexts, aging, communication skills, chi-square analysis
Field	Sociology > Linguistic / Literature
Published In	Volume 7, Issue 3, May-June 2026
Published On	2026-05-12

View / Download PDF File

E-ISSN 3048-7641

doi

CrossRef DOI is assigned to each research paper published in our journal.

AIJFR DOI prefix is
10.63363/aijfr

Downloads

Research Paper Format Copyright Permission Form and Undertaking Form Cover Page Vol 7 Isu 2 Cover Page Vol 7 Isu 1 Cover Page Vol 6 Isu 6

All research papers published on this website are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, and all rights belong to their respective authors/researchers.

CC-BY-SA

About AIJFR Fees & Payment Current Issue Publication Archive	Submit Research Paper Track Submission Status Publication Guidelines Publication Ethics Peer Review & Plagiarism	Join as a Reviewer Editors & Reviewers Reviewer Referral Program Get Reviewer Membership Certi.	Website/Journal Policies Usage Policy Content Policies Privacy Policy

Contact Us		+91-9898-79-39-59	editor@aijfr.com

Advanced International Journal for Research

A Widely Indexed Open Access Peer Reviewed Multidisciplinary Bi-monthly Scholarly International Journal

Narrative Skills in Malayalam Speaking Young Adults and Geriatric

Share this