Thematic progression of children's stories as related to different stages of cognitive development

Abstract

Within the framework of systemic functional linguistics, this paper aims to analyze the thematic structure of twenty children's storybooks in the English language in relation to four Piagetian-based stages of cognitive development: the sensory-motor stage, the pre-operational stage, and two stages of concrete operations. The analysis confirms the tendency of children's storybook authors for the 0–11 years age range to make the characters coincide with the thematic position of the clause. In this way, character identification and the ability to follow plot development is facilitated for the child. However, this general tendency is more evident in storybooks written for children who are in the first two stages (0–6 years) than in those related to the last two concrete operations stages (7–11 years). At the same time, in terms of developmental phases, the stories intended for older children conform less consistently to the patterns of thematic progression described by Danes (Functional sentence perspective and the organization of the text, Academic, 1974).