Poster #116 - Tell me a story! Preschool narratives and early school achievement

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

Integrative Statement

The ability to construct a narrative is a crucial skill, one that is thought to aid in organizing and understanding everyday experiences and the world around us (Baumeister & Newman, 1994). This is because using a narrative lens maintains chronology and context, and allows for the inclusion of personal reasoning, intentions, and beliefs (Baumeister & Newman, 1994). Children are exposed to this framework at an early age, reading story books and co-constructing narratives with adults. This is also the framework that students are taught to use while communicating in oral and written form in different areas of school (Feagans & Appelbaum, 1986). Narratives appear to be interwoven with many important aspects of children’s lives, which poses a question about the influence that it may exert in the development of other skills. Although narrative ability is a component of general language skill, it has been suggested to be a stronger predictor of school achievement than general language ability itself (Feagans & Appelbaum, 1986). Previous research demonstrates that narrative ability in preschool (O’Neill et al., 2004; Wellman et al., 2011) and at early school-age (Fazio et al., 1996; Feagans & Appelbaum, 1986) is predictive of literacy skills in later childhood. Few studies, however, have investigated the relation between narrative ability and mathematical skill. The two studies that have focused on this relation show that narrative ability in childhood is predictive of later mathematical ability (Feagans & Appelbaum, 1986; O’Neill et al., 2004). The current study seeks to fill the gaps in the literature: first, by examining personal narratives, as opposed to fictional narratives, which are less cognitively-demanding (Shapiro & Hudson, 1991) and approximate natural storytelling contexts between children and their parents; and second, by examining specific aspects of narrative ability in preschool-aged children that predict specific emergent literacy and numeracy skills 8 months later in order to better understand the nature of these relations.

Twenty-two children aged 3;4 years, participated in this study (male = 12). Each child completed measures of IQ and general language ability, and was asked to construct three personal narratives. Eight months later, these children completed tasks measuring their early literacy (knowledge of the alphabet and early reading ability) and numeracy skills (knowledge of counting and object-based arithmetic). Analyses showed that distinct aspects of narrative ability were predictive of emergent literacy and numeracy task performance after controlling for IQ and general language skill. As might be expected, conjunction use and perspective shift in children’s narratives predicted knowledge of the alphabet, but also knowledge of counting. In contrast, the total number of words and content words in children’s stories predicted performance on the object based arithmetic task.

These findings highlight the broad impact of children’s growing ability to tell stories, which appears to be associated not only with early literacy skills, but also with numeracy skills. Our results therefore suggest that storytelling in preschool could be a simple, yet effective, method to encourage early school achievement.

Authors

• Taylor Crawford, Trent University
  Presenting Author

• Nancie Im-Bolter, Trent University
  Non-Presenting Author