EMOTION EXPRESSIONS AND KNOWLEDGE OF STORY STRUCTURE: A STUDY OF MANDARIN-SPEAKING CHILDREN'S NARRATIVE DEVELOPMENT *

Abstract

The present study investigates developmental differ ences in Mandarin-speaking children’s use of emotion expressions in narratives and their relatedness to the narrators’ knowledge of story structure. Our data y ield age-related differences in the use of emotion expressions. More importantly, t he narrators’ emotion expressions seem to respond to different hierarchic al levels in the story structure. In particular, the five-year-olds’ emotion expressi ons were mostly triggered by local, immediate situations. Most nine-year-olds’ e motion expressions were motivated by local situations, while few of them co nsidered both local and global story structure . The adults’ attribution of emotion, however, was t riggered by both local situations and the global story plotline , which served to enhance narrative coherence. In addition, the five-year-old s’ attribution of emotion mostly focused on one character in the story, while the ad ults’ attribution involved several characters, which suggests that the adults possess better ability in perspective-taking . Our data suggest that the use of emotion expressio ns may disclose narrators’ knowledge of story structure an d reflect their ability in maintaining narrative coherence. Findings are discu ssed in relation to the development of event schema, theory of mind and the Three-Phase Model for problem-solving.