The development of narrative productivity, syntactic complexity, referential cohesion and event content in four- to eight-year-old Finnish children

Mäkinen, Leena; Loukusa, Soile; Nieminen, Lea; Leinonen, Eeva; Kunnari, Sari

doi:10.1177/0142723713511000

Cited by 74 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Development of social-pragmatic abilities is accompanied by development of various cognitive and language abilities (see Perkins, 2007Perkins, , 2011. With increasing age children are more capable of managing inferential chains of different complexities (Bosco et al, 2013;Bosco & Gabbatore, 2017a, 2017bHarris & Pexman, 2003), express complex issues explicitly (Mäkinen, Loukusa, Nieminen, Leinonen, & Kunnari, 2014) and reason about beliefs (Heiphetz et al, 2013). In this study, we found the most significant progress in children's social-pragmatic abilities occurred between four and six years of age, which is also the period when children's ToM and other cognitive skills (e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding Contextual and Social Meaning in Typically Developing Finnish-Speaking Four- To Eight-Year-Old Children

Loukusa

Mäkinen

Gabbatore

et al. 2017

Psychology of Language and Communication

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This study examined the development of social-pragmatic comprehension in 170 Finnish four-to eight-year-old children. The children were asked to respond to socially and contextually demanding questions targeting their social-pragmatic language processing, and to explain their correct answers in order to elicit their awareness of how they had derived the answers from the context. The results showed that the number of correct answers increased especially between the ages of four and seven years. We found that questions demanding contextual processing without mind-reading were the easiest to understand, followed by questions demanding processing of feelings of others and false beliefs. The questions demanding understanding of relevant language use and processing of contextual factors including mental states and intentions were the most challenging for the children. Between four and five years of age there was a remarkable developmental phase in children's ability to give proper explanations.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding Contextual and Social Meaning in Typically Developing Finnish-Speaking Four- To Eight-Year-Old Children

Loukusa

Mäkinen

Gabbatore

et al. 2017

Psychology of Language and Communication

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“…As previous studies on TD children have indicated, from preschool years through middle-childhood, children's narrative skills undergo substantial developments in measures of referential cohesion, narrative structure, global coherence, and the use of connectives (Colozzo & Whitely, 2014;Gamannossi & Pinto, 2014;Mäkinen, Loukusa, Nieminen, Leinonen, & Kunnari, 2014;Peterson & McCabe, 1988). To gain insights into the narrative abilities in Mandarin-speaking children with ASD, therefore, investigations with school-age children should also be the focus for further research.…”

Section: Narrative Coherence In Mandarin-speaking Children With Asdmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narrative coherence of Mandarin-speaking children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder: An investigation into causal relations

Sah

Torng

2015

First Language

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Previous research has shown that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) had difficulty integrating narrative information coherently. The majority of these studies focused on people narrating in English; however, little is known about the narrative abilities of Mandarin-speaking individuals with ASD. This study investigates the ability of Mandarin-speaking children with ASD to achieve narrative coherence. The data consist of narratives from 18 children with high-functioning ASD (M age : 8.23) and 18 typically developing children (M age : 7.03), matched on language and cognitive abilities. The narratives were elicited using Frog, where are you? Narrative coherence was assessed in terms of causal statements and causal networks. The results reveal no group differences in basic narrative measures or in overtly marked causal statements. The two groups of children were equally sensitive to the relative causal importance of story events. However, the narratives of children with ASD were less causally connected and less coherent. These findings are discussed with regard to their relationship to pragmatic deficits and the cognitive preference of children with ASD.

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“…Or, alternatively, mental state talk development might have been constrained by children's narrative competence. Past studies on narrative competence development have emphasized that at 5 years of age, children storytelling skills are still limited and do not increase much before the onset of schooling [47,48]. For instance, they provide some details on the characters' thoughts and goals [49] but do not elaborate much about the characters' mental states or problem complications [50].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mental State Talk Structure in Children’s Narratives: A Cluster Analysis

Pinto

Primi

Tarchi

et al. 2017

Child Development Research

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This study analysed children's Theory of Mind (ToM) as assessed by mental state talk in oral narratives. We hypothesized that the children's mental state talk in narratives has an underlying structure, with specific terms organized in clusters. Ninety-eight children attending the last year of kindergarten were asked to tell a story twice, at the beginning and at the end of the school year. Mental state talk was analysed by identifying terms and expressions referring to perceptual, physiological, emotional, willingness, cognitive, moral, and sociorelational states. The cluster analysis showed that children's mental state talk is organized in two main clusters: perceptual states and affective states. Results from the study confirm the feasibility of narratives as an outlet to inquire mental state talk and offer a more fine-grained analysis of mental state talk structure.

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The development of narrative productivity, syntactic complexity, referential cohesion and event content in four- to eight-year-old Finnish children

Cited by 74 publications

References 32 publications

Understanding Contextual and Social Meaning in Typically Developing Finnish-Speaking Four- To Eight-Year-Old Children

Understanding Contextual and Social Meaning in Typically Developing Finnish-Speaking Four- To Eight-Year-Old Children

Narrative coherence of Mandarin-speaking children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder: An investigation into causal relations

Mental State Talk Structure in Children’s Narratives: A Cluster Analysis

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