Developmental differences in reported speech and internal state language in preschoolers’ personal narratives

Abstract

The present study explored developmental differences in preschoolers’ use of reported speech and internal state language in personal narratives. Three-, four-, and five-year-olds attending a laboratory preschool shared 204 stories about ‘a time when you were happy/sad’. Stories were audio-recorded, transcribed, and coded for reported speech (direct, indirect, narrativized) and internal state language (cognitive states, total emotion terms, unique emotion terms). Personal narratives told by five-year-olds included more cognitive states and more narrativized speech than those told by three- and four-year-olds, even when accounting for children’s vocabulary skills, and that reported speech (narrativized, direct) were positively correlated with cognitive state talk. These findings highlight distinct shifts in children’s use of cognitive state talk and reported speech in personal narratives told at age five. Associations between reported speech and internal state language are both informed by and support Vygotsky’s (1978) fundamental claim that psychological processes are socially mediated by language.

Reported speech uses in children with and without developmental language disorder

“…Although RS use in TD children has been extensively studied (Berger and Pekarek, 2015; Burdelski, 2015; Johansen, 2011; Mahler, 1997; Serratrice et al . 2015; Shiro, 2012; Welliver et al, 2023), there are fewer studies on DLD children (Crespo and Silva, 2019; Crespo et al , 2021, Kaderavek and Sulzby, 2000). If we could understand better RS uses, we could grasp aspects still unrecognized from DLD language performance and some related cognitive and pragmatic aspects of their communicative behavior.…”