Children's Narratives (children + narrative)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Same Beginnings, Different Stories: A Comparison of American and Chinese Children's Narratives

CHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 5 2000
Qi Wang
This study examined social, emotional, and cognitive characteristics of American and Chinese children's narratives. Twenty-four American and 26 Chinese 6-year-old children participated. Each child was interviewed individually twice with a 1-week delay interval. During the two interviews, children were asked to tell 11 stories prompted by pictures and standard verbal leads and to recount 7 emotional memories. Content analyses were performed on children's stories and memories. In line with predictions, findings indicated that compared with American children, Chinese children showed greater orientation toward social engagement, greater concern with moral correctness, greater concern with authority, a less autonomous orientation, more expressions of emotions, and more situational details in both their stories and memories. A few gender differences were found. Findings are discussed in terms of different value systems and early socialization practices in these two cultures. [source]


Children's narratives and patterns of cardiac reactivity

DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOBIOLOGY, Issue 4 2004
Yair Bar-Haim
Abstract The present study examines the associations between narrative processing, narrative production, and cardiac rate and variability in children. Heart period (HP) and vagal tone (VT) were computed for fifty-eight 7-year-olds (29 males) during a resting baseline and during epochs in which the children listened to and completed a selected set of story-stems from the MacArthur Story-Stem Battery (I. Bretherton, D. Oppenheim, H. Buchsbaum, R. N. Emde, & the MacArthur Narrative Group, 1990). Significant decreases in HP and VT were observed between a resting baseline and epochs of story-stem presentation by the experimenter. In addition, HP was shorter and VT lower during children's narrative production to emotionally laden story-stems compared with narration to a neutral story-stem. Furthermore, narrative and cardiac responses to stories containing separation,reunion themes reflected increased emotional and cognitive load compared with responses to stories that did not contain such themes. Finally, children who showed VT suppression in response to emotion-laden stories produced more coherent and adaptive narratives compared to those of children who did not show VT suppression. The findings suggest interplay between the cognitive-emotional processes associated with narrative processing and production and cardiac activation patterns. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 44: 238,249, 2004. [source]


Do better stories make better memories?

APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2008
Narrative quality, memory accuracy in preschool children
The present study examines how the quality of children's narratives relates to the accuracy of those narratives. Sixty-one 3- to 5-year-olds played a novel game with a researcher in their schools. Children were questioned in an interview that included an open-ended free recall prompt followed by a series of directed questions. Children's narratives were coded for volume, complexity and cohesion as well as for accuracy. Correlational results showed that overall, narrative skills enable the reporting of more information, while decreasing the proportion of information that was accurate. These results appeared to be driven by a quantity-accuracy trade-off; in an ensuing regression analysis with all narrative variables entered into the model, volume was associated with decreases in accuracy while narrative cohesion was associated with increases in accuracy. We discuss the results in terms of their relationship to the development of autobiographical memory as well as implications for forensic contexts. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Parental capacities for triadic relationships during pregnancy: Early predictors of children's behavioral and representational functioning at preschool age

INFANT MENTAL HEALTH JOURNAL, Issue 1 2005
Kai von Klitzing
This study examines associations between parental capacities for triadic (mother,father,child) relationships, assessed prenatally, and the representational and behavioral functioning of their offspring at preschool age. Thirty-eight parental couples were given an intensive psychodynamic interview during their first pregnancy to assess how they anticipated their future parenthood and their relationships as threesomes (mother,father,child). The capacity for triadic relationships ("triadic capacity") was defined as the capacity of fathers and mothers to anticipate their family relationships without excluding either themselves or their partners from the relationship with the infant. Four years later, the representational and behavioral functioning of their children were assessed in depth using child narrative interviews and parental behavior ratings. The coherence of the children's narratives and the number of positive themes they expressed were significantly negatively correlated with the number of behavioral problems. In the longitudinal analyses, there were significant positive correlations between the parental triadic capacities and the coherence/number of positive themes in the children's narratives whereas parental triadic capacities showed a significant negative correlation with the number of the children's externalizing problems. The significance of triadic relational family processes for the development of children's representational world and behavioral functioning is discussed. ©2005 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health. [source]


Do better stories make better memories?

APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2008
Narrative quality, memory accuracy in preschool children
The present study examines how the quality of children's narratives relates to the accuracy of those narratives. Sixty-one 3- to 5-year-olds played a novel game with a researcher in their schools. Children were questioned in an interview that included an open-ended free recall prompt followed by a series of directed questions. Children's narratives were coded for volume, complexity and cohesion as well as for accuracy. Correlational results showed that overall, narrative skills enable the reporting of more information, while decreasing the proportion of information that was accurate. These results appeared to be driven by a quantity-accuracy trade-off; in an ensuing regression analysis with all narrative variables entered into the model, volume was associated with decreases in accuracy while narrative cohesion was associated with increases in accuracy. We discuss the results in terms of their relationship to the development of autobiographical memory as well as implications for forensic contexts. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


A comparison of preschoolers' recall of experienced versus non-experienced events across multiple interviews

APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 8 2003
Martine B. Powell
Preschool children's recall of both experienced and non-experienced activities was examined across three interviews. One hundred and six children aged 4 to 5 years (58 males, 48 females) from both low and high socioeconomic status areas participated in an event called the Deakin Activities, which consisted of two experienced activities. One or two days later, the children were asked to recall what happened in the two activities and an activity they had not experienced which was suggested to have occurred along with the experienced activities. Next, children were given false suggestions about one of the experienced (true-biased) activities and the non-experienced (false) activity. For the remaining experienced (true-unbiased) activity, no questions were asked. Three and eight days after the activities were presented, children were again required to recall all three activities in their own words while a variety of suggestive techniques were used as encouragers. The results revealed that irrespective of the SES group, assent rates across the true and false activities became more similar after the first interview. Furthermore, children's narratives about the false activity became more similar in detail, structure and quality to their narratives about the true activities across interviews. However, the rate of fantastic/improbable details was higher for the false activity compared to the true activities, children reported more interviewer suggestions about the false activity than the true-biased activity, and there were fewer confabulation errors reported about the false activity compared to the true activities. The implications of the results are discussed. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Same Beginnings, Different Stories: A Comparison of American and Chinese Children's Narratives

CHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 5 2000
Qi Wang
This study examined social, emotional, and cognitive characteristics of American and Chinese children's narratives. Twenty-four American and 26 Chinese 6-year-old children participated. Each child was interviewed individually twice with a 1-week delay interval. During the two interviews, children were asked to tell 11 stories prompted by pictures and standard verbal leads and to recount 7 emotional memories. Content analyses were performed on children's stories and memories. In line with predictions, findings indicated that compared with American children, Chinese children showed greater orientation toward social engagement, greater concern with moral correctness, greater concern with authority, a less autonomous orientation, more expressions of emotions, and more situational details in both their stories and memories. A few gender differences were found. Findings are discussed in terms of different value systems and early socialization practices in these two cultures. [source]