Evaluation is a critical component of personal narrative, the component that conveys to listeners how narrators feel about experiences that happened to them. Evaluation conveys the impact of what actually did happen in the context of what narrators expected would happen but did not or what they wished had happened instead. This chapter presents a study of how Taiwanese children develop the ability to evaluate their narratives and a comparison of Taiwanese to English-speaking children in their use of evaluative devices. Prior research (Minami, 1994; Minami & McCabe, 1995) suggests that English-speaking mothers provide more evaluation comments in telling past experiences with their children compared to Japanese-speaking mothers. Differences in use of evaluative devices were hypothesized to be evident across Chinese- and English-speaking children in their personally experienced stories.Mandarin Chinese-speaking children from Taiwan (N = 171) and 96 English-speaking children from the United States participated in this study. Chinese-speaking children were agesd 3 to 9 years and comprised seven groups (at each of those ages). English-speaking, American children were aged 4 to 9 years and comprised six groups. Following Peterson and McCabe’s conversational map (1983), the experimenter elicited a number of personal narratives from each child. Specific prompted topics such as visit to a doctor were given in conversation. The purpose of this task was to assess children’s narrative skill without adult’s support; neutral follow-up responses such as “uh-huh,” “tell me more” were used. Evaluation was coded in Chinese using an adaptation of the system Peterson & McCabe (1983) developed to code evaluation in English-speaking American children aged four through nine years. The percentage of each type of evaluative device per narrative comment was determined and Taiwanese children were compared in this way to American children from the Peterson & McCabe corpus. Results show that Taiwanese children included many fewer evaluation comments (13–25% of the children’s clauses were partially or fully evaluative) in telling their personally experienced stories compared to American children (50% at each age). Results are interpreted as reflecting deep and pervasive cultural differences: Chinese children are socialized to have an interdependent self (with less emphasis on what an individual felt in the past), while American children are socialized to have an independent self (with early and frequent emphasis on what an individual felt in the past).

This study investigates the narrative skill of school-aged children with language impairment in Taiwan. Twelve children, 6 children with language impairment (LI) and 6 children with typical language development (TLD), aged from 8;0 to 9;5 participated in this study. They were asked to tell three personally experienced stories and the longest one was selected and coded along four dimensions, i.e., narrative structure, conjunction, referential strategies, and discourse context. The revision of the Chinese Narrative Assessment Profile (NAP) was also used to score children’s narrative performance. Results show that the children with LI had more difficulties in producing clear, coherent narratives. In comparison with the stories narrated by children with TLD, the stories produced by children with LI exhibited fewer narrative components, evaluation devices, and connectives, but more ambiguous referencing information was evident in their narratives. The narrative profile of each child with LI, however, varied. Limitations of this study and suggestions for further research on narrative skill in children with LI were provided.

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This study examined the typology of depressed mood trajectories and the associated factors over the first year postpartum among Taiwanese mothers. Data of 4332 mothers from a nationwide longitudinal study on child development and care were analyzed. Three classes of depressed mood trajectories were identified, two with lower initial scores and a decreasing trajectory and one with a higher initial score and an increasing trajectory. Subjective financial stress, perceived support, and marital satisfaction were significant in predicting mothers’ membership of the depressed mood trajectory classes. The results highlighted the individual susceptibility to the postpartum depressed mood among Taiwanese mothers.

Parenting is known to impact children’s executive function (EF) skills. However, nearly all the evidence comes from analyses of mother–child interaction. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Child Development and Care Database in Taiwan, the relations between both mother–child and father–child interaction and 3-year-olds’ EF were investigated in 2,164 families. The results showed that mothers interacted with their children differently from fathers in terms of time distribution. Mothers were more equally involved in all aspects of parental involvement, whereas fathers spent more time in play. In addition, both mother–child and father–child play contributed to children’s EF; however, the mediating effect of child motor skills was more prominent for father–child play. This study not only suggests a potential distinct and complementary role of fathers in young children’s EF development but also indicates a unique mediating effect of motor skills in the path from parent–child play to child EF. Implications for parent education are discussed.