Abstract
The present study examines the development of plot, evaluative and syntactic complexity in children's narratives and its relationship with gender, ToM, executive function and linguistic recursive ability. One hundred and five Turkish-speaking children distributed across 4 age groups (four-, five-, seven-eight-, and ten-eleven-year-olds) and 15 adults participated in (a) Elicitation of Narratives Task, (b) Emotional Stroop Task, (c) First- or Second-Order ToM Task (depending on their age), (d) Real-Apparent Emotion Task (four-year-olds), and (e) Comprehension of Complement Clauses Task. Among the three domains of complexity, only plot complexity was found to be related to gender and to develop significantly, in particular at 5 and 7 years of age. Evaluative complexity was low in children in all age groups and was not predicted by any factor. Syntactic complexity was predicted by executive function. These findings are discussed considering the cognitive, linguistic and sociocultural nature of narration.
Highlights
Narrative is a type of discourse referring to goal-directed events that are sequenced in a causal and temporal order [1]
The goal of the present study was to examine the development of plot, evaluative and syntactic complexity and the relationship between these domains and theory of mind (ToM), executive function and linguistic recursive ability that were found to increase within the studied age range
Plot complexity matching with the landscape of action was found to develop significantly with age and to be modulated by gender
Summary
Narrative is a type of discourse referring to goal-directed events that are sequenced in a causal and temporal order [1]. Considering the functions of narrative and its organization, narrative is a complex form of discourse. Creating it requires ‘a joint process of event comprehension and language production’ [4, p.87], and understanding and explaining behaviors and emotions of others through perspective taking. We discern three different notions of complexity in narration: plot, evaluative, and syntactic complexity. We examine how these three domains of complexity develop together over the preschool and school years. Previous research has covered different domains together and examined their relationship to some cognitive and social factors as discussed below, it is timely to combine all three domains and to unravel their cognitive and linguistic bases by relating
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