Poster #169 - A Cross-cultural Analysis of Child Storytelling in China and US

• In Event: 2-110 - Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Section - Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Integrative Statement

Children’s narrative storytelling conveys cultural messages by reflecting their recognition of social life and cultural environment (Bruner, 1990; Harkins & Ray, 2004). Research studies have used narrative analysis as a tool to investigate American and Chinese children’s social behaviors and values. (Domino & Hannah, 1987; Borke & Su, 1972; Wang & Lechitman, 2000; Wang & Fivush ,2005) Results indicate that US culture emphasizes self-expression, individuality, and autonomy (Markus & Kitayama, 1991, 1998; Chao, 1995) while Chinese culture encourages attunement to others’ emotions and conformity to the group (Wang & Li, 2003). Previous research findings detected those cultural differences in storytelling narratives of children as early as 6 years old (Wang & Lechitman, 2000). Chinese children introduced more story characters’ emotional states, group actions and positive interpersonal relationships than their American peers, with some variation across types of emotions and the content of the story (Domino & Hannah, 1987; Wang & Lechitman, 2000). However, little is known about whether these cultural influences are evident in the narratives of children younger than 6 years old. Moreover, few cross-cultural studies have been conducted on the developmental trajectory perspective.
This study used existing data from CHILDES (Child Language Data Exchange System), in which Chen and Guo (2009) and Berman and Slobin (1994) used the same wordless picture book named Frog Where Are You (Mercer Mayer, 1969) and data collection method to collect narratives of 12 Chinese and 12 American children for two age groups (4 and 9). We examined three research questions: 1) Do Chinese children have more attunement to story characters’ emotions overall than American children? 2) Do Chinese children have a higher level of social interaction in storytelling than American children, as indexed by higher frequencies of introducing group collaboration and positive interpersonal relations? 3) What is the developmental trajectory of children’s use of emotion words and references to social interaction from the age of 4 to 9 in both cultures? Do the possible culture-related differences above vary across different age groups?
A coding scheme (see table 1) was developed to answer the questions above. Children’s use of emotion words were divided by type (anger, fear, worry, and happiness). Social interaction components were composed of group actions and positive interpersonal relations.
Two raters were trained to conduct coding, and the average inter-reliability was 0.89 for different variables in preliminary coding. Kwallis cross-cultural analyses were used to identify potential culture-related differences, as well as the developmental trajectory of emotion and social interaction in children’s storytelling.
Analysis has been conducted on 9-year-olds in two cultures. The results suggested that Chinese children introduced significantly more emotion words overall and more words for fear specifically than American children. Meanwhile, Chinese 9-year-olds made more social interaction references in their storytelling than US children while telling the same story (see table 2).

Authors

• Heyang Yin, Harvard University
  Presenting Author

• Tonghui Zhu, Harvard University
  Non-Presenting Author