Narrative language is a specific and complex type of discourse which requires skills pertaining to different types of competencies ; in this respect, narrative production represents an important tool with which to study and analyze children’s typical and atypical developmental processes of different abilities : cognitive, linguistic, pragmatic, and social understanding in different observational settings. The aim of this study is to assess the narrative skills in 150 3 - to 11 -year old children with typical development. Children were asked to tell a story represented in a picture book (The Frog Story, Mayer 1969 ). We considered 3 aspects of narrative discourse : 1 ) macro-structural complexity, 2 ) syntactic complexity of discourse to give expression to temporal and causal connections that link the actions of story, 3 ) mental state references. The results show an effect of age on the dependent variables we considered in the study : 1 ) structural aspects : as age increases, children’s narratives include all the constitutive aspects of the story and clearly identify all the episodes ; 2 ) syntactic complexity : the production of simple propositions decreases as age increases and stabilizes around 9 years of age, and vice versa, the general production of the complex sentences increases ; 3 ) mental state references : the terms more used by all children refer to perceptions and communications, followed by emotions and desires. The attributions of cognitions and moral judgments are poorly produced by all age groups. keywords : Narrative - Competencies - Preschoolers - Primary school children - Italian - Picture book.

La valutazione della competenza narrativa in bambini prescolari e scolari attraverso un libro illustrato

D'AMICO, SIMONETTA;
2008-01-01

Abstract

Narrative language is a specific and complex type of discourse which requires skills pertaining to different types of competencies ; in this respect, narrative production represents an important tool with which to study and analyze children’s typical and atypical developmental processes of different abilities : cognitive, linguistic, pragmatic, and social understanding in different observational settings. The aim of this study is to assess the narrative skills in 150 3 - to 11 -year old children with typical development. Children were asked to tell a story represented in a picture book (The Frog Story, Mayer 1969 ). We considered 3 aspects of narrative discourse : 1 ) macro-structural complexity, 2 ) syntactic complexity of discourse to give expression to temporal and causal connections that link the actions of story, 3 ) mental state references. The results show an effect of age on the dependent variables we considered in the study : 1 ) structural aspects : as age increases, children’s narratives include all the constitutive aspects of the story and clearly identify all the episodes ; 2 ) syntactic complexity : the production of simple propositions decreases as age increases and stabilizes around 9 years of age, and vice versa, the general production of the complex sentences increases ; 3 ) mental state references : the terms more used by all children refer to perceptions and communications, followed by emotions and desires. The attributions of cognitions and moral judgments are poorly produced by all age groups. keywords : Narrative - Competencies - Preschoolers - Primary school children - Italian - Picture book.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11697/13342
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