This article argues for rethinking and reorientation in the study of narrative coherence and its development in young children. The most influential model guiding current research in this area (a) tends to equate narrative coherence with causal linkages between events and (b) suggests that the primary (or exclusive) strategy used by children to achieve coherence is to embed causally-connected event sequences in the goal-directed actions of a single major protagonist. Despite its undoubted contributions, this approach is misleadingly narrow in several respects, and it has not been able to reconstruct the actual dynamics and trajectories of young children’s narrative development. A first step toward overcoming these limitations is to undertake the foundational work of reconstructing and examining the range of actual modes and strategies of narrative coherence used by children, beginning with young children, which must include delineating the different narrative purposes and intentions these embody and the distinctive ways that they integrate events and event structures with the depiction and coordination of characters and relations between characters. I offer some theoretical and methodological proposals along these lines, illustrated with empirical examples.
2024. Gender and Grammatical Cohesion in Indonesian Preschoolers’ Narrative. In Language Practices Among Children and Youth in Indonesia, ► pp. 35 ff.
Jiang, Yan, Alison Wishard Guerra, Shana R. Cohen, Timothy T. Brown, Naomi T. Lin, Monica Molgaard & John Iversen
2024. Echoing Parental Scaffolding Style in Co–Constructed Narratives: Its Impact on Executive Function Development in Diverse Early School-Age Children. Early Education and Development 35:6 ► pp. 1335 ff.
Kushartanti, Bernadette & Dwi Noverini Djenar
2024. Introduction. In Language Practices Among Children and Youth in Indonesia, ► pp. 1 ff.
2022. Language Development and Executive Functions in Russian 5–7-Year-Old Children: A Longitudinal Study. In Child Development in Russia [Early Childhood Research and Education: An Inter-theoretical Focus, 3], ► pp. 37 ff.
2022. The Relationship Between Cognitive Flexibility and the Development of Coherent Speech in Preschoolers (A Study of Preschoolers’ Narratives). Russian Foundation for Basic Research Journal. Humanities and social sciences► pp. 121 ff.
Oshchepkova, Ekaterina, Daria Bukhalenkova & Aleksander Veraksa
2021. The Relation Between Cognitive Flexibility and Language Production in Preschool Children. In Advances in Cognitive Research, Artificial Intelligence and Neuroinformatics [Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 1358], ► pp. 44 ff.
2019. The Relationship of Executive Functions and Speech Production in Senior Preschool Children: Working Memory and Storytelling. Clinical Psychology and Special Education 8:3 ► pp. 56 ff.
Gardner‐Neblett, Nicole & John Sideris
2018. Different Tales: The Role of Gender in the Oral Narrative–Reading Link Among African American Children. Child Development 89:4 ► pp. 1328 ff.
Pesco, Diane & Andréanne Gagné
2017. Scaffolding Narrative Skills: A Meta-Analysis of Instruction in Early Childhood Settings. Early Education and Development 28:7 ► pp. 773 ff.
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