3-226 - Children’s Narration in Cultural Contexts

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Talking about past experiences and sharing other forms of stories is a universal social activity among children and their families (Eisenberg, 1985; Wang, 2001). Importantly, narrative structure, content, and storytelling practices are culture-bound (Melzi, 2000; Schröder et al., 2013). Children’s narrative abilities and interactions are increasingly recognized as relevant for many aspects of child development and education (Fivush et al., 2006; Griffin et al., 2004), as well as for understanding cultural socialization practices, beliefs and values (Han et al., 1998; Wang, 2004). In this paper symposium, we examine children’s narrative development across storytelling, language and cultural contexts to illuminate language- and culture-specific mechanisms of narrative practice. The first presenters describe a cross-cultural comparison of coherence and chronological sequencing in the personal narratives of monolingual English U.S. children and monolingual Spanish Costa Rican children. The next presenters explore developmental changes in various features of the narratives told by U.S. Latino children, as well as the relation to their self-regulation skills. The next presenters compare evaluation strategies in the picture book narration of monolingual Mandarin-speaking children and Mandarin-English-speaking bilingual children from Taiwan. Together, the studies’ findings showed meaningful differences in macro- and micro-structural features of narratives by culture, language context, as well as story task and topic. Across the studies, differences revealed in narrative features were consistent with variations in cultural beliefs, practices, and socialization goals. A discussant will address the implications and application of study findings for research, intervention, and educational purposes.

Sub Unit

• Language, Communication

Chair

• Kimberly Reynolds Kelly, CSU Long Beach

Discussant

• Paola Uccelli, Harvard University

Individual Presentations

• And then what happened? Chronological sequencing in Anglo and Latino children’s personal narratives - Presenting Author: Ana Carmiol, University of Costa Rica; Kimberly Reynolds Kelly, CSU Long Beach; Grace Ocular, California State University, Long Beach; Jesus Plascencia, California State University, Long Beach; Marcela Ríos-Reyes, University of Costa Rica

• Latino preschoolers’ narrative abilities across two tasks and the relation to their self-regulation skills - Presenting Author: Gigliana Melzi, New York University; Kelly Escobar, New York University, Department of Applied Psychology; Lauren Scarola, New York University; Adina Schick, New York University, Department of Applied Psychology

• Evaluation skill in Chinese-English bilingual children and Taiwanese Chinese-Mandarin monolingual children - Presenting Author: Chien-ju Chang, National Taiwan Normal University; Allyssa McCabe, University of Massachusetts Lowell