Cover not available
Part of
Language Impairment in Multilingual Settings: LITMUS in action across Europe
Edited by Sharon Armon-Lotem and Kleanthes K. Grohmann
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 29] 2021
► pp. 13–46

MAIN story comprehension

What can we expect of a typically developing child?

 | Uppsala University
 | Uppsala University
This study investigates story comprehension in 124 typically-developing children aged 4–6 growing up in Sweden, using the LITMUS Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN, Gagarina et al. 2012). 72 Swedish monolinguals and 52 Swedish-English bilinguals from similar socio-economic backgrounds told two MAIN stories each and answered standardised questions that probe inferencing of goals, thoughts and emotions of story characters. Overall comprehension scores were calculated, and responses to individual questions were analysed. Results were compared across age groups, languages, and tasks. Already at age 4, and certainly at age 6, overall comprehension scores were high, indicating good general understanding of the stories. Scores differed significantly between tasks, suggesting that comprehension of MAIN Cat/Dog is easier than Baby Birds/Baby Goats. On all tasks, protagonists’ goals were understood well at age 4, approaching ceiling (> 90%) at age 5–6. Internal states as initiating events were also relatively well understood. However, many children struggled to infer emotional reactions of protagonists when this necessitated taking the whole plotline into account. We suggest that the processing abilities of the average 6-year-old are not yet developed enough to master every aspect of inferential understanding probed on the MAIN. Results held across languages and mono-/bilinguals, suggesting that they generalise.
Keywords: emotion, inference, MAIN, story comprehension, Swedish
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Children’s narrative production, comprehension and inferencing
    • 2.2Narrative comprehension in the MAIN
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Materials
    • 3.3Procedure
    • 3.4Coding and analysis
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Overall comprehension scores
    • 4.2Performance on specific comprehension questions
  • 5.Discussion and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 18 November 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.29.01boh
References (58)
References
Altman, C., Armon-Lotem, S., Fichman, S., & Walters, J. (2016). Macrostructure, microstructure, and mental state terms in the narratives of English–Hebrew bilingual preschool children with and without specific language impairment. Applied Psycholinguistics, 37(1), 165–193. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Astington, J. W., & Pelletier, J. (2005). Theory of mind, language, and learning in the early years: Developmental origins of school readiness. In B. D. Homer & C. S. Tamis-LeMonda (Eds.), The development of social cognition and communication (pp. 312–352). Taylor & Francis.Google Scholar
Bamberg, M., & Damrad-Frye, R. (1991). On the ability to provide evaluative comments: Further explorations of children’s narrative competencies. Journal of Child Language, 18(3), 689–710. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berman, R. A., & Slobin, D. I. (1994). Narrative structure. In R. A. Berman & D. I. Slobin (Eds.), Relating events in narrative: A cross-linguistic developmental study (Ch. IIA, pp. 39–84). Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Bishop, D. V. M., & Adams, C. (1992). Comprehension problems in children with specific language impairment: Literal and inferential meaning. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 35(1): 119–129. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blom, E., & Boerma, T. (2020). Bilingual children’s lexical and narrative comprehension in Dutch as the majority language. In Bohnacker & Gagarina (Eds.), (pp. 197–229).Google Scholar
Boerma, T. & Leseman, P., Timmermeister, M., Wijnen, F., & Blom, E. (2016). Narrative abilities of monolingual and bilingual children with and without language impairment: Implications for clinical practice. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 51(6): 626–638. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bohnacker, U. (2016). Tell me a story in English or Swedish: Narrative production and comprehension in bilingual preschoolers and first graders. Applied Psycholinguistics 37(1), 19–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bohnacker, U., & Gagarina, N. (2020a). Cross-linguistic development of narrative comprehension from A to Z. In Bohnacker & Gagarina (Eds.), (pp. 1–30). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(Eds.). (2020b). Developing narrative comprehension: Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives. John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bohnacker, U., Öztekin, B., & Lindgren, J. (2020). Bilingual Turkish-Swedish children’s understanding of MAIN picture sequences: Individual variation, age, language and task effects. In Bohnacker & Gagarina (Eds.), (pp. 99–147). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bruner, J. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fiani, R., Henry, G., & Prévost, P. (2020). Narrative comprehension in Lebanese Arabic-French bilingual children. In Bohnacker & Gagarina (Eds.), (pp. 31–60). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gagarina, N. (2016). Narratives of Russian–German preschool and primary school bilinguals: Rasskaz and Erzaehlung. Applied Psycholinguistics, 37(1), 91–122. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gagarina, N., Klop, D., Kunnari, S., Tantele, K., Välimaa, T., Balčiūnienė, I., Bohnacker, U., & Walters, J. (2012). Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN). ZAS Papers in Linguistics, 56.Google Scholar
(2015). Assessment of narrative abilities in bilingual children. In S. Armon-Lotem, J. de Jong, & N. Meir (Eds.), Assessing multilingual children: Disentangling bilingualism from language impairment (pp. 243–276). Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gagarina, N., Klop, D., Kunnari, S., Tantele, K., Välimaa, T., Bohnacker, U., & Walters, J. (2019). MAIN: Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives – Revised. ZAS Papers in Linguistics, 63. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gagarina, N., Topaj, N., & Sürmeli, N. (2020). Why do you think the boy would be unhappy if he saw what the cat was eating? Comprehension of German narratives in Russian- and Turkish-German bilingual children. In Bohnacker & Gagarina (Eds.), (pp. 231–268).Google Scholar
Haddad, R. (in progress). Acquisition of Arabic and Swedish in bilingual 4–7-year-olds in Sweden (preliminary title of PhD thesis). Uppsala University.
Iluz-Cohen, P., & Walters, J. (2012). Telling stories in two languages: Narratives of bilingual preschool children with typical and impaired language. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15(1), 58–74. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kapalková, S., Polišenská, K., Marková, L., & Fenton, J. (2016). Narrative abilities in early successive bilingual Slovak–English children: A cross-language comparison. Applied Psycholinguistics, 37(1), 145–164. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kemper, S. (1984). The development of narrative skills: Explanations and entertainments. In S. A. Kuczaj (Ed.), Discourse development: Progress in cognitive development research (pp. 99–124). Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kunnari, S., & Välimaa, T. (2020). Narrative comprehension in simultaneously bilingual Finnish-Swedish and monolingual Finnish children. In Bohnacker & Gagarina (Eds.), (pp. 149–170).Google Scholar
Kunnari, S., Välimaa, T., & Laukkanen-Nevala, P. (2016). Macrostructure in the narratives of monolingual Finnish and bilingual Finnish–Swedish children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 37(1), 123–144. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Letts, C., & Leinonen, E. (2001). Comprehension of inferential meaning in language-impaired and language normal children. International Journal of Language Communication Disorders, 36(3): 307–328. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liles, B. Z. (1993). Narrative discourse in children with language disorder and children with normal language: A critical review of the literature. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 36(5), 868–882. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lindgren, J. (2018). Developing narrative competence: Swedish, Swedish–German and Swedish–Turkish children aged 4–6 (Studia Linguistica Upsaliensia 19). Uppsala University.Google Scholar
(2019). Comprehension and production of narrative macrostructure in Swedish: A longitudinal study from age 4 to 7. First Language, 39(4), 412–432. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lindgren, J., & Bohnacker, U. (2020). Inferential comprehension, age and language: How German-Swedish bilingual preschoolers understand picture-based stories. In Bohnacker & Gagarina (Eds.), (pp. 61–98). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lynch, J. S., & van den Broek, P. (2007). Understanding the glue of narrative structure: Children’s on- and off-line inferences about characters’ goals. Cognitive Development, 22, 323–340. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mäkinen, L. (2014). Narrative language in typically developing children, children with specific language impairment and children with autism spectrum disorder (Unpublished PhD dissertation). Oulu University.Google Scholar
Maviş, I., Tunçer, M., & Gagarina, N. (2016). Macrostructure components in narrations of Turkish–German bilingual children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 37(1), 69–89. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mayer, M. (1969). Frog where are you? Dial Press.Google Scholar
Nicolopoulou, A., & Richner, E. R. (2007). From actors to agents to persons: The development of character representation in young children’s narratives. Child Development, 78(2), 412–429. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Öztekin, B. (2019). Typical and atypical language development in bilingual Turkish–Swedish children aged 4–7 (Studia Linguistica Upsaliensia 25). Uppsala: Uppsala University.Google Scholar
Paris, A. H., & Paris, S. G. (2003). Assessing narrative comprehension in young children. Reading Research Quarterly, 38(1), 36–76. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pelletier, J., & Astington, J. W. (2004). Action, consciousness and theory of mind: Children’s ability to coordinate story characters’ actions and thoughts. Early Education and Development, 15(19), 5–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Peristeri, E., Andreou, M., Tsimpli, I. M., & Durrleman, S. (2020). Bilingualism effects in the narrative comprehension of children with developmental language disorder and L2-Greek: Links with language, executive function and Theory of Mind. In Bohnacker & Gagarina (Eds.), (pp. 297–330).Google Scholar
Perner, J., Leekam, S. R., & Wimmer, H. (1987). Three-year-olds difficulty with false belief: The case for a conceptual deficit. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 5, 125–137. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roch, M., Florit, E., & Levorato, C. (2016). Narrative competence of Italian–English bilingual children between 5 and 7 years. Applied Psycholinguistics, 37(1), 49–67. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roch, M., & Hržica, G. (2020). Narrative comprehension by Croatian-Italian bilingual children 5–7 years old: The role of receptive vocabulary and sentence comprehension. In Bohnacker & Gagarina (Eds.), (pp. 171–196).Google Scholar
Shapiro, L. R., & Hudson, J. A. (1991). Tell me a make-believe story: Coherence and cohesion in young children’s picture-elicited narratives. Developmental Psychology, 27(6), 960–974. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1995). Relevance: Communication and cognition (2nd ed.). Blackwell.Google Scholar
Stein, N. L., & Glenn, C. G. (1979). An analysis of story comprehension in elementary school children. In R. O. Freedle (Ed.), New Directions in discourse processing (pp. 53–120). Ablex.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Tompkins, V., Guo, Y., & Justice, L. M. (2013). Inference generation, story comprehension, and language skills in the preschool years. Reading & Writing, 26(3), 403–426. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Trabasso, T., & Nickels, M. (1992). The development of goal plans of action in the narration of a picture story. Discourse Processes, 15(1), 249–275. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Trabasso, T., & Rodkin, P. C. (1994). Knowledge of goal/plans: A conceptual basis for narrating ‘Frog where are you?’. In R. A. Berman & D. I. Slobin (Eds.), Relating events in narrative: A cross-linguistic developmental study (Chapter IIB, pp. 85–106). Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Trabasso, T., Secco, T., & van den Broek, P. W. (1984). Causal cohesion and story coherence. In H. Mandl, N. L. Stein, & T. Trabasso (Eds.), Learning and comprehension of text (pp. 83–111). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Trabasso, T., Stein, N., Rodkin, P. C., Park Munger, M. & Baughn, C. R. (1992). Knowledge of goals and plans in the on-line narration of events. Cognitive Development, 7(2), 133–170. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tsimpli, I. M., Peristeri, E., & Andreou, M. (2016). Narrative production in monolingual and bilingual children with specific language impairment. Applied Psycholinguistics, 37(1), 195–216. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ukrainetz, T. A., Justice, L. M., Kaderavek, J. N., Eisenberg, S. L., Gillam, R. B. & Harm, H. M. (2005). The development of expressive elaboration in fictional narratives. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 48(6), 1363–1377. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van den Broek, P. (1997). Discovering the cement of the universe: The development of event comprehension from childhood to adulthood. In P. W. van den Broek, P. J. Bauer, & T. Bourg (Eds.), Developmental spans in event comprehension: Bridging fictional and actual events (pp. 321–342). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Wehmeier, C. M. (2020). Narrative comprehension and its associations with gender and nonverbal cognitive skills in monolingual and bilingual German preschoolers. In Bohnacker & Gagarina (Eds.), (pp. 269–296).Google Scholar
Westby, C. E. (2012). Assessing and remediating text comprehension problems. In A. G. Kamhi & H. W. Catts (Eds.), Language and reading disabilities (3rd ed., pp. 163–225). Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.Google Scholar
Widaman, K. F. (2006). Missing data: What to do with or without them. In K. McCartney, M. R. Burchinal, & K. L. Bub (Eds.), Best practices in quantitative methods for developmentalists. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 71(3), Serial No. 285, Ch. 3, 42–64.Google Scholar
Wimmer, H., & Perner, J. (1983). Beliefs about beliefs: Representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children’s understanding of deception. Cognition, 13, 103–128. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (6)

Cited by six other publications

Lindgren, Josefin
2023. Age and task type effects on comprehension and production of narrative macrostructure: storytelling and retelling by Swedish-speaking children aged 6 and 8. Frontiers in Communication 8 DOI logo
Bohnacker, Ute & Natalia Gagarina
2020. Cross-linguistic development of narrative comprehension from A to Z. In Developing Narrative Comprehension [Studies in Bilingualism, 61], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Bohnacker, Ute, Buket Öztekin & Josefin Lindgren
2020. Bilingual Turkish-Swedish children’s understanding of MAIN picture sequences. In Developing Narrative Comprehension [Studies in Bilingualism, 61], ► pp. 99 ff. DOI logo
Gagarina, Natalia, Nathalie Topaj & Natalie Sürmeli
2020. Why do you think the boy would be unhappy if he saw what the cat was eating?. In Developing Narrative Comprehension [Studies in Bilingualism, 61], ► pp. 231 ff. DOI logo
Lindgren, Josefin & Ute Bohnacker
2020. Inferential comprehension, age and language. In Developing Narrative Comprehension [Studies in Bilingualism, 61], ► pp. 61 ff. DOI logo
Wehmeier, Carina Marie
2020. Narrative comprehension and its associations with gender and nonverbal cognitive skills in monolingual and bilingual German preschoolers. In Developing Narrative Comprehension [Studies in Bilingualism, 61], ► pp. 269 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 december 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.