"Scaffolding" refers to the temporary support that parents and others give a child to perform a task. In narrative contexts, children's speech is guided and scaffolded by mothers who initiate and elicit children's contributions about past experiences. Unfortunately, data on this phenomenon from languages other than English are very…

Two lines of research are synthesized in this study: (1) structural aspects of children's narrative discourse and (2) the role of maternal styles of talking with young children. Personal narratives of 20 Japanese preschool children, aged 4 and 5 years, and their mothers were analyzed for developmental differences in the 2 age groups. Then…