Injured children (N=145 between 2 and 13 years of age) were recruited from a hospital emergency room and were interviewed about the injury event soon afterward and then twice more at yearly intervals. Their transcripts were coded three ways: completeness of overall structural components of a prototypical injury event (e.g., who, when, where),…

Investigated the role of parental interaction styles on children's developing skill at providing contextual orientation in personal experience narratives. Eighteen monthly narratives were elicited from toddlers. The children's increasing skill at independently providing context about when and where was correlated with mothers' frequency of using…

Factors affecting the memorableness of 228 children's personal narratives were examined by requesting incidental free recall of the narratives from 116 subjects. Narratives with sensational content were recalled more frequently than nonsensational ones, indicating the major contribution of content to memorableness. Highpoint structural…

Young children told personal experience narratives about a time when they had been happy, surprised, and mad. Researchers assessed their explicit emotion labels and use of linguistic forms of evaluation to convey emotion. Children used various methods to convey emotions. Gender differences were rare. The only evaluative device that hinted at…

Examined free recall narratives of younger and older children and their parents independently interviewed about injuries requiring hospital emergency treatment. Found that mothers' narratives were more cohesive and coherent than fathers', and girls' narratives differed from boys' in parallel ways. Parent and child measures were correlated;…

Presents analyses of the use of the essential connectives "so,""because,""then," and "but" in narratives of children aged three to nine years. Connectives were used semantically, pragmatically, or, rarely, in error. Age changes were minimal. Structural complexity and elaboration improved throughout the…

Traces the clarity of noun/pronoun referents and the use of cohesive ties in personal experience narratives told by children aged two, four, six, and nine years as well as by adults. Shows that children interrelated their sentences in similar ways as adults. Discusses implications of the study for educators. (HB)

Investigated whether low-income mothers learned to interact with their preschoolers in ways that fostered narrative skills. Mothers of intervention children were encouraged to elicit questions, encourage longer narratives, and participate in narrative conversation. Assessment of children's pre- and post-intervention narrative and vocabulary skills…