Listening to Maternal Story Telling Affects Narrative Skill of 5-Year-Old Children

Abstract

The effect of maternal story telling on the child's use of eight linguistic evaluative devices (e.g., reference to internal states of actors) was assessed for sixty 5-year-old children. We used picture books that provided the components of a narrative while leaving story tellers free to use their own linguistic evaluative devices. Children increased the number of clauses and the use of evaluatives in story telling as a consequence of hearing the story told by their mother. Transferring these skills to more general story telling required hearing the mother tell two different, but related, stories. This maternal effect on the child's narrative skill may contribute to the process of enculturation.

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