Narrative Production Research Articles

Death and disappearance at border crossings: factualization devices and truth(s) accounts

ABSTRACT In this article, we analyze three forensic and counter-forensic devices that go beyond the strictly medico-legal realm to show which concrete practices and truth-spots contribute to (re)constructing a public account of migrant deaths and disappearances along border zones. Drawing on written documents and semi-structured interviews, we examine operations led by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Europe and Africa, the work of the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner (PCOME) together with the NGO Colibrí Center for Human Rights in Arizona, and Forensic Oceanography's (FO) open-source investigations of shipwrecks of migrants in the Central Mediterranean Sea and the structural violence embedded in militarized border regimes. We argue that these practices constitute factualization devices, namely practices that transform lived experience of death and disappearance into an objectified reality that can be visibilized and mobilized in the public sphere as part of a counter-narrative. We demonstrate how these factualization practices are imbricated in valuation practices, i.e. practices that ascribe not only an epistemological but also an ethical, aesthetic and political value to the work of objectification, which inform the production of truth narratives.

Spelling and writing skills in minority-language bilingual children exposed to a transparent orthography: multilevel profiles and concurrent predictors

ABSTRACT Many studies have explored how Language-Minority Bilingual Children (LMBC) read and comprehend, while the way they learn to spell and write has received less attention. This study aimed to assess a comprehensive profile of spelling and writing skills in LMBC, comparing performances of 4th and 5th grade bilingual (n = 74) and monolingual (n = 131) children in word and nonword reading and multilevel spelling and writing tasks (word, nonword and passage dictation, and written narrative production). Furthermore, we explored the role of linguistic and cognitive predictors (nonverbal Intellectual Quotient, verbal knowledge, morphosyntactic comprehension, nonword repetition) in spelling and writing outcomes. Our findings showed that, overall, LMBC did not reach a monolingual-like proficiency in spelling by the end of primary school, while they were similar to monolinguals in reading tasks and were able to produce written narratives with adequate macrostructure, syntactic complexity, and lexical variety. Moreover, morphosyntactic comprehension predicted spelling in both groups. Nonverbal intelligence and verbal knowledge predicted spelling skills only for the bilingual group. With regards to writing skills, morphosyntactic comprehension emerged as a predictor exclusively in the bilingual group. These results are discussed with reference to educational and clinical implications.

A methodological proposal from situated knowledge epistemology: Narrative Productions

ABSTRACT The Narrative Productions’ Methodology emerges from Haraway’s epistemological and political concept of “situated knowledges”. According to this perspective, all knowledge emerges from semiotic and material conditions that give rise to a specific gaze, which diverges from both a gaze “from nowhere” – realism – and a gaze “from everywhere” – relativism. Unlike realist and relativist perspectives, the Narrative Productions’ Methodology reintroduces the notion of an “author” localized in a web of relations and speech genres. Furthermore, in the Narrative Productions’ Methodology, the alternative to the critique of the representation of others through the research act – typical of traditional research – consists in the possibility of partial connections with those close to the phenomenon under study. Thus, this methodology suggests that the research team connects with these positions over several sessions. This procedure will produce a hybrid text that expresses a certain way of understanding the phenomenon and guarantees the participants’ agency over the product. This article will introduce the fundamental principles of this methodology using a study on the events that happened in Barcelona in June 2001 on the occasion of the World Bank summit.

‘Seizing the Window of Strategic Opportunity’: A Study of China’s Macro–Strategic Narrative since the 21st Century

Since the turn of the 21st century, China has leveraged the international environment in its favour to achieve a spectacularly rapid rise, a success that Chinese strategic policymakers attribute in part to ‘seizing the strategic window of opportunity’. How has China perceived the international environment and shaped the narrative of its macro-strategy? What impact has it had on China and the world? The article explores the evolution of the strategic narrative of the ‘window of opportunity’ in three stages since the 21st century and explores its impact in terms of quantity and keyword mapping by analysing the narrative texts of China’s ‘discourse coalition’ (government, official media and intellectual elites). The study found that China’s macro-strategic narrative is primarily driven by the official political and semi-official intellectual elites and places a premium on domestic political persuasion rather than external displays of strategic intent. It combines classical and modern philosophical thinking and methodology with the two core objectives of ‘maintaining peace’ and an ‘economic priority’. Over 20 years, the trend of narrative production of the ‘strategic opportunity period’ has shown a concentrated emergence and fluctuating decline, and its narrative elements have been enriched, interlinked and aligned with the narrative of the CPC’s core policies. The narrative of the ‘strategic opportunity period’ has been a powerful force in building domestic legitimacy, guaranteeing partial fulfilment of strategic objectives and offering lessons for other countries to learn from. Inevitably, the narrative faces a number of dilemmas and challenges.

Review: Performing Power in Zimbabwe: Politics, Law, and the Courts since 2000, by Susanne Verheul

Review: <i>Performing Power in Zimbabwe: Politics, Law, and the Courts since 2000</i>, by Susanne Verheul

From Acting Out Stories to Telling Stories: Elicitation of Oral Narrative Productions in the Japanese Language Classroom

Given the complexity and difficulty of discourse-level grammar acquisition, narrative construction can be a challenging task for many language learners as well as for language teachers to provide guidance in classroom. This paper provides a structure for narrative production practices that are based on assigned dialogues in classroom setting by following the Japanese narrative structure of kishōtenketsu 起承転結 (introduction, development, twist, and conclusion), and William Labov’s (1972) six components of a natural narrative model—Abstract Orientation, Complicating Action, Resolution, Evaluation, and Coda. Sample narrations in Japanese are provided to discuss a selected set of discourse-level features commonly used in each phase of narrative production. As pedagogical implications, this paper provides a step-by-step instruction on how to conduct narrative rehearsals in classroom by using a dialogue from the NihonGO NOW! series (Noda, et al. 2020). It also discusses ways to provide support and opportunities for language learners’ narrative skill development.

Dialect density, language abilities and emergent literacy skills of prekindergarten children who speak African American English

BackgroundNumerous studies have observed a significant and unique relationship between children's use of nonmainstream dialect and reading outcomes. We aimed to examine the relationship between nonmainstream dialect and reading at its roots by completing a preliminary evaluation of the relationship between African American English (AAE) dialect and multiple dimensions of emergent literacy skills in young African American children enrolled in Head Start.MethodsSeventy‐eight African American preschoolers completed the Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening‐PreK (PALS‐PreK) and a narrative retell of the wordless picture book, Frog, Where Are You? The narratives were used to generate three measures of narrative productivity and the dialect density measure (DDM).ResultsStructural equation modelling found that the PALS‐PreK measures significantly loaded onto a single print‐related emergent literacy latent variable and that the three narrative measures significantly loaded onto a single language‐based emergent literacy latent variable. There was a significant relationship between print‐related emergent literacy skills and DDM, but the overall model had a poor fit, showing that the relationship between emergent literacy and DDM was weak.ConclusionsWe conclude the manuscript by discussing implications of this research and suggestions for further study.

Агентность цифровых платформ: ценностный подход

Introduction. A lack of current approaches to the study of digital platforms is ignoring the internal logic of their functioning, which determines their social agency, as well as the value foundations of this agency. The aim of this work is a socio-philosophical analysis of the agency of digital platforms through the lens of the value approach. Theoretical analysis. Specificity of social reality of platforms is their dependence on the generation of content by users, so the main value for platforms is users’ productivity, and the content of platforms’ agency is keeping users in the role of content producers. To realize this value, platforms’ agency is manifested in a narrativization strategy that focuses on keeping users as “storytellers” as stories are the most successfully consumed content, with short-term storytelling and live-action mechanisms providing additional value to content. In the long term, this strategy transforms the notion of sociality, which comes down to narrative productivity, with the ultimate goal of generating material for artificial intelligence training, the goal of which could be to create a metanarrative that reveals the value of each individual user’s productivity. Conclusion. Today, the agency of platforms is manifested in understanding sociality as narrative productivity, which provides, firstly, the maintenance of the business model of platforms and, secondly, the creation of sufficient data for learning promising artificial intelligence systems.

Review of Andrea Smorti's Telling to Understand the Impact of Narrative on Autobiographical Memory.

Andrea Smorti's Telling to Understand provides an opportunity to mentalise linguistic productions in the light of narrative understanding and the relationality underlying the nature of communication processes. In the post-modern polyglot society, narrative understanding abreacts meanings emerging from the coexistence and interaction of different linguistic universes. In the elicitation of meanings, the different forms of narration become tales that consecutively become stories if inserted into a chronologically ordered system. Such stories are maintained by causal links that guarantee continuity and coherence to the narrative production.

Condensation Recondensed

Adaptations are, in a sense, multi-layered vehicles for memories of literary (or other) originals. The audience’s memories of different media versions of the classic text coexist, compete and converge, creating an extensive multi-dimensional experience. How does their memory work when readers become viewers (or vice versa) and recondense many ideas, images, and feelings linked to specific narrative worlds? The paper centres around two metaphors for memory regimes – present explicitly or implicitly – in contemporary adaptation studies. The regime of a palimpsest is based on the organic memory; it describes the individual perception of narratives: the memory of the viewer or the reader activates the intertextual “richness” of the adaptation, comparing/juxtaposing/merging different media versions of one narrative world. The regime of a network regulates the “life” of narratives in collective/cultural memory, the way meaning is ascribed to particular stories throughout the centuries, and the mechanisms of production and dissemination of narratives by the cultural industries. Metaphors help elaborate on the differentiation between the individual and the collective, the fixed and the fluid in the process of adapting, between the conventional and the contingent. Through the analyses of four film adaptations of Romeo and Juliet and a recent TV series, using the tragedy’s motifs, this paper shows how the network regime uncovers ways to make the viewer’s memory “get side-tracked”, and recall what the viewer is unlikely to remember. Via networks adaptations make their audiences remember “prosthetically” and learn more about “real” spaces with their real problems, while being initially trapped into viewing by the familiarity of old fictional stories.

Self-Repair in Elicited Narrative Production in Speakers of Russian as the First (L1), Second (L2), and Heritage (HL) Language

The current study investigates self-repairs in the speech of three groups of Russian speakers: monolingual controls (N = 12) residing in the Russian Federation, for whom Russian is their first dominant language (L1); bilingual Russian–Hebrew speaking participants (N = 12), who acquired Russian as their Heritage Language (HL) in contact with the dominant Societal Hebrew in Israel; and bilingual Russian–Chinese speakers (N = 12) residing in the Russian Federation at the time of testing, for whom Russian is their second language (L2). Picture-elicited narratives were coded for instances of self-repairs, split into Conceptualizer Repairs (C-repairs)—which imply pragmatic, semantic, or lexical changes—and Formulator Repairs (F-repairs), correcting different types of errors. In addition, self-repair initiators—such as cut-offs, hesitation pauses, and discourse markers—were annotated before each instance of self-repair. The results indicate that L2 speakers, in general, use self-repairs more frequently than L1 and HL speakers. L1 speakers hardly produced F-repairs, while HL and L2 speakers resorted to both C- and F-repairs. L1 speakers mainly used C-repairs for appropriacy, whereas HL and L2 speakers used C-repairs for rephrasing and lexical item change. As for F-repairs, HL speakers tended to change pronunciation and morphology, while L2 speakers implemented more morphological repairs. Lexical initiators of self-repairs were more common in L1 speech; however, in the L2 group we saw much more frequent cut-offs of repaired speech fragments. As such, varying self-repair strategies were employed by different speaker groups, shedding light on the underlying processes of language production. There was also evidence of cross-linguistic transfer of non-lexical self-repair initiators: HL speakers resorted to prolongations as initiators in HL-Russian (a strategy that is common in their dominant language, Hebrew), whereas L1 speakers used vocalized and silent pauses more frequently.

Habilidades de comprensión y producción narrativa en niños montevideanos de 5 años. Una comparación por nivel socioeconómico

Narrative abilities are an important part of communication, academic success, and healthy relationships. These abilities involve complex language and cognitive skills, such as precise vocabulary, control of the coherence markers, relations of cause-effect, and planning. They are also relevant during the elementary school years and interact with the socio-emotional skills necessary to understand different points of view. Oral narrative production develops dramatically from 3 to 5 years of age and is a key factor in a child’s ability to communicate about the world. During this period narratives are a product of increasing linguistic sophistication over the preschool period and there is a complex relationship between early narratives and language proficiency. So far, most research about this topic has been pursued in populations other than Latin American preschoolers. At the same time, a considerably lesser number of studies about narrative abilities development have been carried out comparing typically developing children from different socioeconomic backgrounds. To our knowledge, there are no studies in Uruguay that assess the narrative abilities development in typically developing preschool children who grow up in vulnerable contexts. It is therefore of the utmost relevance to produce empirical evidence for this population. For these reasons, this study aimed at characterizing and comparing narrative abilities and receptive vocabulary in a group of a total of 54 Uruguayan preschoolers from different socioeconomic backgrounds (middle and low socioeconomic status, SES). Children were assessed in receptive vocabulary and narrative abilities across two task conditions: (1) narrative comprehension through a story retelling task which included some final questions about the story; (2) narrative production elicited from a set of thematically related puppets. The examiner gives a child a puppet set and asks him/her to elaborate a narrative using them. After that, puppets are removed and the child is asked to retell the story without puppets. Children’s oral productions were video-taped and then transcribed and categorized using the ELAN software (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, 2019). The verbal information was categorized according to Stein and Glenn’s (1979) story grammar and considering the microstructural aspects (productivity and complexity). Analyses showed that both groups performed according to their stage of development in both narrative task conditions. With regards to the narrative comprehension task, no differences in the number of recovered categories, extension, or narrative complexity were observed. Concerning the narrative production task, there were no differences between the groups in narrative sequences, nor in the number of completed episodes in conditions neither with puppets nor without puppets. Results showed that children who grow up in poverty perform more poorly than their peers from middle-income families in receptive vocabulary, in the number of recovered episodes, ask-answer items of narrative comprehension tasks. Moreover, concerning the microstructural parameters analyses showed that children from middle socioeconomic backgrounds scored better in syntactic complexity in the without puppets condition. No differences between the groups were observed in syntactic complexity in the puppets condition. Taken together these results indicate a complex link between vocabulary and narrative abilities. It is worth noting that important differences in vocabulary did not reflect in the children’s narrative performance. These findings are also relevant as a contribution to an ongoing debate about the role of vocabulary in the development of narrative abilities. Furthermore, these results could inform the discussion about the ecological validity of the test of cognitive and linguistic development. Finally, to provide some additional evidence to Uruguayan Spanish language about the relationships between oral language and cognitive development allows to carry out early interventions before formal schooling sets children for success in school and life. https://doi.org/10.16888/interd.2022.39.3.4

Estudio de caso de narrativas infantiles en videollamadas: Aportes al análisis de interacciones mediadas por tecnología

The preventive and compulsory social isolation established in Argentina due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic led families to look for alternatives to maintain the bond and communicate with their non-cohabitant relatives. One of these alternatives was the use of videochat. Videochat enables new ways of audiovisual communication (Ames et al., 2010; Ballagas et al., 2009; McClure &amp; Barr, 2017) that could affect the interactions in which adults and children collaborate in the construction of different types of discourses. Narratives are one of the first and most relevant forms of discourse, it allows for the reconstruction and communication of one’s experience and is one of the ways in which thought is configured. In this work, a case study was conducted of the narratives produced during videochat conversations of a four-year-old girl with non-cohabiting relatives. The aim was to characterize the interactions that help in the configuration of children’s narratives during technology-mediated situations. The research question were: (a) how do technology-mediated interactions allow the child to narrate about past and future events and to create fictional narratives?; (b) how does the child participate in the construction of those narrative in the context of these technology-mediated situations? Five videos of videochat interaction belonging to a single four year old girl were selected from the corpus “Contextos naturales de interacción en los hogares en los que los/as niños/as usan tempranamente tecnología”. This corpus gathers different technology-mediated interactions collected during daily activities in the home of children aged 0 to 6 years. First, 31 narratives in which the girl participated were identified. Subsequently, used the constant comparative method was used (Strauss &amp; Corbin, 1998) as well as analysis tools developed within the framework of interactive sociolinguistics (Gumperz, 1982, 1984); also, concepts developed in previous research (Arrúe et al., 2014; Labov, 1972; Rosemberg et al., 2010; Stein et al., 2020) were heuristically recovered to answer the research questions. Of the 31 narratives produced in the interactions, 14 were related to personal experience, 13 were of future events, and 4 were fiction narratives. Regarding the posed questions, results showed that children do in fact create personal, future and fictional narratives in technology-mediated interactions with adults. Technology also enables children to decide how much they want to participate in interactions: they can lead the narrative, or they can back off to a yes-or-no answer kind of participation. The child relies on the possibility to share visual information, beyond audio, to provide both events and context information. This interactive and multimodal aspect of videochats was also found to enable the girl to turn to present adults both to scaffold her narrative production and to resolve doubts about unknown words. Even though there are methodological limitations to this study, this first approach to narratives in technology-mediated interactions shows the richness that this type of interaction can have for the development of children’s language. https://doi.org/10.16888/interd.2022.39.3.2

Contribution of oral narrative textual competence and spelling skills to written narrative textual competence in bilingual language-minority children and monolingual peers.

This study investigates the developmental pattern and relationships between oral narrative textual skills, spelling, and written narrative textual skills in monolingual and bilingual language-minority (BLM) children, L1-Chinese and L2-Italian. The aims were to investigate in monolingual and BLM children: (1) the developmental patterns of oral and writing skills across primary school years; (2) the pattern of relationships (direct and mediated) between oral narrative textual competence, spelling skills, and written narrative textual competence with age and socio-economic status (SES) taken under control. In total, 141 primary school children from grades 2 to 5 in Central Italy (44% BLM, 56% monolinguals) aged between 7 and 11 years (M-age = 8.59, SD = 1.13; 41% girls, 59% boys) obtained scores for oral and written narrative textual competence, spelling accuracy in dictation, and written texts. One-way ANOVA and ANOVA with robust method (Welch test) analyses and Bonferroni’s correction showed that BLM children had poorer spelling skills in dictation and written narrative textual competence (i.e., text structure) than their monolingual peers. After preliminary correlation analysis, the results of hierarchical regression showed that the relationship between oral and written narrative textual competence is completely mediated by spelling accuracy in BLM children. These results suggest that adequate performance in written narrative textual competence depends on adequate spelling accuracy in writing stories. The Sobel test verified the power of this mediation. In monolinguals, the strongest predictor of written narrative textual competence is oral narrative textual competence. This relation is stronger in older children whose spelling skills are automatized. The identified pattern of relationships shows a complex network of oral and written processes. The scarce spelling skills characterizing BLM children may explain why spelling skills determine a low written narrative textual level. Scarce spelling skills absorb cognitive resources, hindering high-level cognitive processes that regulate narrative production. In monolinguals, the medium of writing does not impact narrative textual competence. Children’s oral narrative textual competence easily transfers into their written narrative productions. These findings have implications for the assessment and instruction of literacy skills in young BLM children and their monolingual peers.

Monitoring indicators of scholarly language: A progress monitoring tool for documenting changes in narrative complexity over time

The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to determine the differences in narrative macrostructure abilities of children in different age groups using a progress monitoring tool based in discourse theory. A majority of existing research regarding narrative developmental patterns has been based in schema theory. The Monitoring Indicators of Scholarly Language (MISL) rubric is based in discourse theory and was designed to characterize aspects of narrative proficiency in school-age children. The data for this project consisted of 687 narratives elicited using the Aliens subtest from The Test of Narrative Language—Second Edition (TNL-2). There were 1,597 participants who ranged in age from 4; 0 to 15; 0 (year; month). An ordinary least squares regression where age predicted total macrostructure score, followed by a series of post hoc ordinal logistic regressions (OLR) where age predicted each individual MISL rubric element was used. Results of both the simple regression on total macrostructure score and the series of ordinal regression analyses for each macrostructure element indicated that age was a significant predictor of the scores children received. Collectively, these results suggest that the MISL is a developmentally valid measure of narrative production abilities. Developmental milestones based on discourse theory are reported to be substantially later than has been reported for schema theory. The differences are highlighted and the implications for progress monitoring for narrative development are discussed.

Biographies of Labor Activists: Trajectories, Daringness, and Challenges

AbstractThis comment discusses three topics. First, John French's biography of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is located in the broader trajectory of the production of biographical narratives of activists under the auspices of the historiography of the labour movement. Second, French's daring gesture of comparing the trajectories of Lula and August Bebel, who lived in such different contexts, and the impact of this in terms of a more sophisticated understanding of labour history in Brazil is discussed. Finally, we look at some of the challenges faced by writers of biographies of working-class leaders, notably in relation to the intersectionality between class, race, and gender.

The Cruel Optimism of Anthropocene Technologies: Suspicion and Fascination of Technology in Okja, What Happened to Monday, and Geostorm

The Cruel Optimism of Anthropocene Technologies: Suspicion and Fascination of Technology in <i>Okja</i>, <i>What Happened to Monday</i>, and <i>Geostorm</i>

What Predicts Oral Narrative Competence Among African American Children? Exploring the Role of Linguistic and Cognitive Skills.

Oral narrative, or storytelling, skills may constitute a linguistic strength for African American children, with implications for academic and social well-being. Despite this possibility, few studies have examined individual differences in oral narrative skill among African American children. To address this gap in the literature, this study examined how children's linguistic and cognitive skills predicted their competence in structuring oral stories, both on average and for children with different levels of narrative skill. Fictional oral narratives were elicited from a sample of 144 typically developing African American children, aged 4-8 years, using a wordless picture book as the stimulus. The effects of children's vocabulary, complex syntax, and nonverbal cognitive skills on macrostructural performance were assessed using linear regression to test average effects and simultaneous quantile regression to test effects across different levels of narrative skill. Children's competence in using complex syntax and nonverbal cognition, but not vocabulary, was predictive of narrative production, on average and as a function of narrative skill. Syntactic complexity appeared increasingly more relevant as children's narrative skill increased, whereas nonverbal cognition emerged as the most important for children at the lower to moderate ends of the narrative skill distribution. Both linguistic and cognitive skills help explain individual differences in African American children's macrostructural competence. Promoting children's development of complex syntax and nonverbal reasoning may provide potential mechanisms for supporting oral narrative skill development.

PERAN AGENDA BUILDING BAGI PUBLIC RELATIONS

Public relations performs issue management as an effort to maintain the image and reputation of the agency. This study aims to determine the role of public relations in making agendas that increase the positive image of the government. This research is academically useful in developing a distinctive theory of public relations, namely the agenda of building information subsidies.&#x0D; The results show that public relations applies an agenda building strategy in narrative production. The theory of agenda building &amp; information subsidies is used by public relations for positive public perception of the government. Agenda building starts from the planning process carried out by the crisis team, coordination meetings to sharpen issues, making communication strategies, media monitoring, media relations, news tone analysis, narrative production, evaluation, and information subsidies. Public relations has implemented the concept of agenda building information subsidies to influence public opinion through issue management with several steps, namely highlighting certain issues, paying attention to issues, framing media, connecting issues with other symbols, utilizing big data and artificial intelligence to capture issues comprehensively.&#x0D; Qualitative research was conducted by conducting interviews with 10 public relations workers working in government agencies. public relations utilizes various media to maximize agenda building, such as: big data, press conferences, websites, releases, twitter, Instagram, facebook, youtube live streaming, and so on. Data analysis using miles, hubberman, saldana and validity test with source triangulation.&#x0D; &#x0D;

Age-Related Differences in the Expression of Causal Relationships During Narrative Production of Croatian Children

A successful narration relies on the ability of an individual to express a coherent sequence of temporally and causally related events organised around a specific theme, and this skill typically develops in early preschool age. Narrative coherence can be assessed by sequences or elements of story grammar. According to the causal network model, story grammar is viewed as an interconnected network of causal relationships, including enabling, physical, motivational, and psychological relationships. The importance of causal coherence has been recognised in many studies dealing with narrative discourse from the developmentalperspective. However, previous studies have reported inconsistent results with respect to the use of different types of causal relationships in the narratives of children of different ages. In the present study, we aimed to examine the differences between preschool and school children in their ability to express causal relationships, both overall and specific, in the narratives that they produce. Participants were monolingual Croatian-speaking children with typical language development, who were stratified into two groups: preschool (n = 41, mean age = 6;3 years) and school children (n = 50, mean age = 8;4 years). Narratives were collected using the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN), which was adapted to Croatian. The results show significant differences between the two groups of children in the overall proportion of causal relationships expressed, as well as specifically in the proportion of motivational relationships. There were no significant differences between the groups in production of enabling, physical, or psychological relationships. School children expressed more causal relationships overall than preschool children, as well as specifically more motivational relationships. As far as we know, this study is the first to investigate causality in the narratives of monolingual Croatian-speaking children using the causal network model. Our results only partially confirm the findings of previous studies, suggesting the need for further research to better understand the development of causal coherence in children’s narrative discourse.