Narrative comprehension and its associations with gender and nonverbal cognitive skills in monolingual and bilingual German preschoolers

Abstract

This paper investigates the development of narrative comprehension in monolingual and simultaneously bilingual German preschoolers, in relation to the children’s gender and their nonverbal cognitive skills. MAIN (Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives) was used to assess narrative comprehension after telling (Baby Birds) and retelling (Cat) in 199 monolinguals and 66 simultaneous bilinguals. The groups did not differ significantly concerning their nonverbal cognitive skills and German language proficiency. Both the monolingual and the bilingual children were divided into three age groups (4;6–4;11, 5;0–5;5, 5;6–5;11). The narrative comprehension results pointed to significant age effects only for the monolinguals, in both elicitation modes. No gender effects were found for any group. For the nonverbal cognition and narrative comprehension measures, weak correlations obtained for both monolinguals and bilinguals. These results strengthen the idea that narrative comprehension is related to nonverbal cognitive skills of monolingual and bilingual preschoolers.