Assessing narrative comprehension in young children

Abstract

S This article explains the creation and validation of the Narrative Comprehension of Picture Books task (NC task), an assessment of young children's comprehension of wordless picture books. Study 1 explored developmental changes among 158 K‐2 children in narrative comprehension and the correlations among children's performance on the NC task and other measures of early reading. There was significant improvement with increasing age on NC task measures. Significant concurrent validity was found between the NC task and oral reading comprehension for readers and between the NC task and several prereading skills for prereaders. Study 2 tested the generalizability of the NC task by giving a sub‐sample of students (n = 91) two additional picture books using the NC task procedures. Intertask correlations showed that children were consistent on each of the NC task dependent variables across the three books. The same developmental trends by grade and reading ability were evident on all three versions of the task. Study 3 confirmed the generalizability of the NC task across children, books, and testers, and it revealed sensitivity to longitudinal growth in children's comprehension skills. There was little evidence of practice effects influencing NC scores. Study 3 also revealed significant concurrent and predictive validity between NC measures and other assessments of early reading skills such as the Gates McGinitie Reading Test and the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. The NC task is a valid quantitative measure of young children's comprehension that is sensitive to developmental changes and adaptable to various books. We discuss how narrative comprehension is fundamental to beginning reading and how the NC task may be used for classroom instruction and assessment.

Preschoolers’ Causal Reasoning During Shared Picture Book Storytelling: A Cross-Case Comparison Descriptive Study

“…Narratives are stories that construct relationships between characters, actions, events, motivations, and emotions, based on contextual clues and prior knowledge (Paris & Paris, 2003).…”

“…This reflects the view that narratives involve mental representations of depicted or described situations that include causal connections between various story elements (Van den Broek et al, 2005;Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998). Thus, behavior and mental states could be connected to particular events (e.g., someone becoming upset because they are trapped), events from different parts of the story can be connected (e.g., someone slipping and falling because they dropped a banana peel earlier on), single events can have multiple causes (e.g., a wild fire requires a long dry period and a discarded match or cigarette), and a single cause can lead to multiple events (e.g., a flood can destroy buildings, uproot trees, and wash vehicles away) (Van den Broek et al, 2005;Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998 Through constructing narratives, children thus learn to form coherent and meaningful representations that include concepts about causal relationships between various story elements (Lever & Sénéchal, 2011;Paris & Paris, 2003). When children construct narratives that make sense of pictorial stimuli, they also make inferences, form predications, and provide explanations that enable them to form coherent accounts of causally sequenced plots (Paris & Paris, 2003).…”

“…Thus, behavior and mental states could be connected to particular events (e.g., someone becoming upset because they are trapped), events from different parts of the story can be connected (e.g., someone slipping and falling because they dropped a banana peel earlier on), single events can have multiple causes (e.g., a wild fire requires a long dry period and a discarded match or cigarette), and a single cause can lead to multiple events (e.g., a flood can destroy buildings, uproot trees, and wash vehicles away) (Van den Broek et al, 2005;Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998 Through constructing narratives, children thus learn to form coherent and meaningful representations that include concepts about causal relationships between various story elements (Lever & Sénéchal, 2011;Paris & Paris, 2003). When children construct narratives that make sense of pictorial stimuli, they also make inferences, form predications, and provide explanations that enable them to form coherent accounts of causally sequenced plots (Paris & Paris, 2003). In a study by O'Neill, Pearce, and Pick (2004) that individually measured young children's narrative skills, preschoolers showed this kind of reasoning when narrating a picture book story that depicted different mental states in the context of characters interacting (e.g., seeing a frog in her salad causes a diner to react with surprise and anger).…”

Assessing Language for Literacy: A Microanalysis of Children’s Vocabulary, Syntax and Narrative Grammar

“…Key narrative componentscharacters, problem, attempted solutions, and solution -are articulated (Stevens, et al, 2010). His retelling reinforces skills that support the understanding of text, as he identified story elements that connect the entire narrative (Paris & Paris, 2003). This is where it is presumed that Michael's language and reading comprehension competencies intersect.…”

“…Children's ability to produce oral narratives encompasses a range of complex language skills and is considered an important predictor of later language and literacy development (Lever & Sénéchal, 2011;Paris & Paris, 2003;Riley & Burrell, 2007). Many children as young as two to three years old develop a rich repertoire of knowledge about narrative, and become increasing skilled at understanding and producing narrative stories, matched to their home languages and cultural practices (Bliss & McCabe, 2008;Heath, 1983).…”