Narrative comprehension in early and middle childhood

Wenner, Jennifer

Abstract

This research investigates the development of narrative skills during the early school years. Production, comprehension, and recall of narratives is a fundamental achievement of early childhood and serves as a foundation for future literacy. Nonetheless, there is a great deal of variability in children?s narrative skills to be explained. Researchers have had limited success in discerning the source of the variability using measures such as basic preliteracy skills and quantity of shared book reading in the home. A promising source of the variability lies in the narrative interactions children have with their parents while reminiscing about past events. The proposed research has three objectives: 1) Examine the relations between children?s story production and recall. Past research either has not examined these skills jointly or has not used a common approach to coding the tasks. Jointly examining these tasks using a standard coding scheme will reveal the extent to which a common narrative ability underlies varied tasks. 2) Investigate whether children?s narrative skills can be predicted from the style of conversation their parents use during reminiscing. Prior research has shown that parents? narrative style predicts the quality of their children?s memory reports.
An aim of the proposed research is to determine whether such narrative experiences represent an """"""""apprenticeship"""""""" that fosters children?s general narrative abilities into the early school years. 3) Provide students at Augsburg College opportunity to participate in high quality and innovative developmental psychology research. The data can be used in the classrooms to demonstrate principles of cognitive development as well as methodological techniques. The proposed research can also support 3-5students per year working directly on the project in all facets of the research process. This research will enable the students at Augsburg College and the Principal Investigator to more fully illuminate the development and precursors of narrative comprehension in the early grade school years.