Examining relations between parent-child narrative talk and children’s episodic foresight and theory of mind

Abstract

Participation in narratives that discuss the past and the future is associated with preschool-aged children’s language and cognitive development. In particular, adopting an elaborative style (asking questions to request information, and providing information) during narratives about the past has been shown to benefit children’s development, yet little is known about their participation in narratives about the future. We examined similarities and differences in parents' and children’s elaborativeness during narratives about the past and the future, and relations between parents’ elaborative features, children’s elaborative features, and children’s episodic foresight and Theory of Mind. Four-year-olds (N = 36) and their parents co-constructed narratives about past and future events in a laboratory setting. There were no differences in elaborativeness between past and future narratives for both parents and children. Controlling for parents’ narrative elaborativeness, children’s overall elaborativeness about the past and the future predicted their own episodic foresight, but the relation between children’s elaborativeness and their Theory of Mind was not significant.