Poster #115 - Supporting Young Children’s Narrative Skills through Participatory Styles of Conversation

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Language, Communication

Integrative Statement

Early narrative skills predict later academic success (e.g., Fivush, Haden, & Reese, 2006). Different cultures practice different narrative styles when supporting children language development (e.g. Schieffelin & Eisenberg 1984). European-American parents often engage children in an elaborative style, which consists of adults asking numerous questions and structuring the narrative. The elaborative style has been accepted as the gold standard in adult-child interactions (Fivush et al., 2006).



However, parents in collectivistic cultures engage in a participatory conversation style, which focuses on social component of the narrative and consists of adults and children sharing the role of narrator without the adult structuring the conversation (Melzi, Schick, & Kennedy, 2011). The participatory style has received limited attention in the literature. This study attempted to narrow this gap by examining the effects of participatory style in the narrative skills of young children of collectivistic backgrounds.

The following research question was considered: Are participatory styles of conversations more effective than elaborative styles in supporting children complex narrative skills?


Methods

Participants

The sample consisted of 40 children ages 3-9 (Mean age =6.7) from diverse cultural and linguistic background (23 Spanish, 14 Yiddish, and 3 Hindi).
Procedure

Caregivers were instructed to engage children in conversation as usual. Families were visited at home and observations were video-recorded and transcribed verbatim.
An interactive episode , defined as an interaction centered around about one theme (Wang, Bernas, & Eberhard, 2012), was used as a basic measuring unit.
Measures
Caregiver Strategies: Parents use of participatory or elaborative styles were measured by the Caregiver Prompt Styles Coding Scheme (CPS; Plotka &Wang, 2016).
Children’s Narrative Complexity (measured in three ways):
1. Children’s vocabulary was assessed through Number of Different Words (NDW) in an episode

2. Children’s macro level narrative complexity was measured by the number of Independent Idea Units (IIU; Chafe, 1980).
3. Children’s Engagement was measured by:
a. The number of children’s initiations of topics for conversation within each episode.
b. The number of turns that children and adults took in the course of each conversation (Dickinson & Tabors, 2002).
Coder Reliability
Reliability was conducted on 25% of the data. The reliability values were as follows; type of prompts: Kappa = .81, p < .0001; IIU: = .92, p < .0001; number of child initiations = .91, p < .0001; number of turns = 1.00, p < .0001. NDW were computed with special software.

Results
Seventy-four conversations were coded and were divided into participatory or elaborative episodes. The results of MANOVA show that participatory episodes had higher levels of children’s narrative complexity [Wilks’ λ=.57, F(7,67)= 7.16, p= .000]. Univariate follow-up comparisons show that participatory episodes had higher levels of NDS, IIU and child engagement (Tables 1).
Discussion
Participatory styles, which are typical in collectivistic cultures, are effective at promoting narrative skills in young children. Families, teachers, and professionals are trained to use elaborative narrative styles (e.g. Wilhelm, 2014). Adopting participatory strategies can be a culturally-sensitive effective way of fostering expressive language skills in young children.

Authors

• Raquel Plotka, Pace University
  Presenting Author

• Xiao Lei Wang, Pace University
  Non-Presenting Author