Factors that may influence the picture-elicited narrative production of 4-year-old children were examined. Subjects were 70 children of 4 years of age who told narratives about two familiar events: baking cookies and going to the beach. Of the sample, 22 children in a description condition described each of 6 line drawings for each event. Another 22 children in a standard condition narrated stories without previewing the pictures. In The remaining 26 children, in a preview condition, previewed the pictures before narrating stories. For half of the children in each condition, the pictures included a problem-resolution sequence; for the other half, the pictures included an uneventful sequence. Findings revealed that 4-year-olds differentiated between descriptions and stories in the complexity of their narratives and in their use of tense and pronouns. The episodic structure of the narratives influenced measures of linguistic cohesion with the result that children produced more coherent stories and tended to use a more complex pronoun strategy in the problem-resolution version. The preview condition, in comparison to the description condition, resulted in improved stories. It is concluded that 4-year-olds are capable of narrating problem-resolution stories when pictures are used as aids. (Author/RH)