Spontaneous use of past/future personal-narrative talk in the everyday home language of parents and 1-5-year-olds

• In Event: Children’s decontextualized talk in ethnically and socioeconomically diverse communities in the U.S., China and Norway

Abstract

Personal narrative is decontextualized talk in which parents and children discuss personal experiences about past or future events. Most prior research on everyday, spontaneous use of narrative either focuses exclusively on talk about past experiences (Miller & Sperry, 1988), or does not differentiate between these narrative forms (e.g., Rowe, 2012; Demir, et al., 2015). Prior research also demonstrates income-based disparities in narrative use (Wiley, et al., 1998), paralleling socioeconomic differences in overall quantity of talk (e.g., Hart & Risley, 1995).

In this study, we build on previous research in three ways: first, by differentiating between narratives about past and future events; second, by examining both absolute (number of narrative utterances) and relative (proportion of utterances that are narrative) frequency of narrative talk; and third, by expanding the focus of demographic differences from income to race/ethnicity, as culture may affect the prominence of narrative talk in everyday home contexts (Curenton & Justice, 2004).

This study capitalizes on an ongoing study of language and cognitive development in a diverse sample of 64 children and their primary caregiver(s) (Mincome = $61,000; SDincome = $32,000; ranging from less than $15,000 to over $100,000). Families (36 White/Non-Hispanic, 14 Black/African American, 8 White/Hispanic, 6 Mixed/Other Race) were visited every 4 months between 14- and 58-months, and 90-minutes of everyday, spontaneous parent-child interactions were recorded. Talk during these interactions was transcribed at the utterance level, and 1,003,900 utterances distributed across 726 transcripts were coded for past narrative (e.g., discussing the child’s day at school) and future narrative (e.g., discussing an upcoming holiday).

We used longitudinal Hierarchical Linear Models (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002) with age points (mean-centered at 36 months) at level 1 nested in dyads at level 2, to describe use of past and future narrative talk across early childhood. At level 1, we examined variation within-subjects as a function of speaker (with children as the reference category), intercept (status at 36 months), growth (differences by linear age), and acceleration (differences by quadratic age). At level 2, we examined between-subjects variation in speaker, intercept, growth, and acceleration, as a function of the child’s race/ethnicity.

Results are presented in Table 1 and suggest that while we observe differences between White parents and Black and Hispanic parents in absolute number of past narrative utterances, these effects vanish when examining proportion of utterances that are narrative. In other words, while Black and Hispanic families tend to talk less overall, relative amounts of past narrative talk are similar across racial and ethnic groups. However, both absolute and relative amount of future narrative talk differs between White families and Black and Hispanic families, suggesting cultural factors may influence how often future events are discussed in everyday parent-child interactions.

These findings are an important next step in describing factors beyond income and wealth that influence use of parent-child narrative talk about different time frames. Additionally, this research from naturalistic settings also adds to the growing lab-based/elicited literature, in which narratives about past and future events are differentiated (e.g., Shin, Leech, & Rowe, 2020).

Authors

• Rebecca Frausel, Pennsylvania State University, Erie
  Presenting Author

• Lindsey Engle Richland, University of California - Irvine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susan Cohen Levine, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susan Goldin-Meadow, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author