On the ability to relate events in narrative

Abstract

The study concerns how children of different ages talk about events that form part of an ongoing narrative. The data base is a set of stories told by 112 Hebrew speakers—preschoolers aged 3 to 5, schoolchildren aged 7 to 12, and a group of adults—relating the contents of a picture booklet depicting the adventures of a boy and a dog in search of their missing frog. Analysis of text length, number of references to plot‐advancing events and of plot summations, types of connectivity markers, and use of verb tense revealed that most 3‐ and 4‐year‐olds and some 5‐year‐olds described each picture in isolation, whereas older children chained the events sequentially in relation to an overall plot line. Descriptions at the micro‐level of a single scene show similar developmental trends to those found at the macro‐level of the overall story line. A major cutoff point emerges between the narratives of preschoolers and those of children from age 7 up. Narrators at the two extremes—immature 3‐year‐olds and fully mature adults— manifest distinct behaviors in several respects. This study shows that the development of narrative abilities can be characterized in terms of a three‐phased model applied to describing the acquisition of morpho‐lexical systems of Hebrew; and it confirms findings of other researchers on cognitive maturation, linguistic means of expression, and familiarity with narrative norms in a literate society.