Effect of pictorial versus oral story presentation on children's use of referring expressions in retell

Abstract

Young children have been found to use referring expressions less adequately than older children to introduce and maintain reference to characters and objects in their stories. Indirect evidence suggests that this tendency may be stronger when children look at pictures as they retell stories; they may tend to presuppose shared knowledge of information in pictures, even when the listener clearly cannot see the pictures. The present study is an investigation of the effects of presenting stories pictorially versus orally on children's use of adequate reference.Retellings of stories by 44 children in Kindergarten and Grade 2 were compared when they were presented: (a) orally, (b) through pictures, and (c) both orally and pictorially. An oral version was created for each of 3 picture sets, representing a single complete episode with 2 characters. Oral versions were controlled for length, story units, and language level. Within-subject comparisons revealed main effects for both presentation type and age, and an interaction. The younger children used a higher percentage of adequate reference in the oral-only than the picture-only condition. Older children used high percentages of adequate reference in all conditions. Thus it appears that older children can Downloaded from 284The way referring expressions are used in a narrative will affect its cohesiveness (Halliday & Hasan 1976), defined as the degree to which parts of a text or discourse are linked together by various linguistic means. How referential cohesiveness is achieved depends on factors such as shared context and mutual knowledge of the interlocutors (Hickmann 1995). In a narrative, for example, new characters and objects must be introduced by some referring expression in such a way that the listener understands that the referents are ncw; thereafter, reference to these characters and objects must be maintained in such a way that the listener can understand that the referent has already been introduced and which previous referent is intended by a particular referring expression. The following example illustrates adequate reference to a story character: 1 a. One day a hippo was going shopping.b. She saw a fruit stand.Such reference is endophoric, that is, it is accomplished by introducing and maintaining reference through language rather than by direct reference to the extra-linguistic context itself (e.rophorcr). Typically, in the absence of shared context, a new referent is introduced endophorically by a noun phrase (NP) with an indefinite article; the use of an indefinite NP implies a presupposition that the referent is unknown to the listener. As illustrated in the following example, the first mention of a person can be made using a pronoun, when the listener can be presumed to know the intended referent due to its presence in the shared context. 2.[while watching a skater on television] He really missed that turn.In subsequent mentions of a referent, speakers must choose among forms appropriate for reference maintenance, most commonly definite NPs and prono...

The effect of two different visual presentation modalities on the narratives of mainstream grade 3 children

“…Instead we found no significant difference between the two groups with regard to the inclusion of linked GAOs. The similar performances for micro-and macrostructural measures may be because, as previously reported by Schneider and Dubé (1997), school-age children are less influenced by the elicitation modality (visual, audio or audiovisual) and require less visual support when telling stories, than preschool children. Our grade 3 participants were aged between 8 years 5 months and 9 years 4 months.…”

“…Schneider (1996) found that 5-to 9-year-old children with language impairment produced the largest number of story grammar units in response to the audio-only condition (story retelling with no pictures) compared with the picture-only condition. Schneider and Dubé (1997) found that normally developing preschool children used references more adequately in response to an audio-only presentation than when formulating stories themselves from pictures only. Schneider and Dubé (2005) used the same three elicitation modalities as they had previously used (1997) in similar study populations, but investigated the impact of the presentation modalities on story grammar units produced by the children.…”

Who Does What to Whom: Introduction of Referents in Children’s Storytelling From Pictures

“…Children's ability to introduce and maintain referents in narratives develops gradually throughout the early school years (e.g., Hickmann, 1991Hickmann, , 1997Hickmann, , 2003Kail & Hickmann, 1992;Karmiloff-Smith, 1987;Peterson, 1993;Schneider & Dubé, 1997;Villaume, 1988;Warden, 1981;Wigglesworth, 1990). Young children frequently introduce referents in a confusing way, tending to use referring expressions that are exophoric, even when the listener does not have access to the extralinguistic context and thus cannot understand exophoric referents (Kail & Hickmann, 1992).…”

Cultural entrenchment of folktales is encoded in language

“…Importantly, studies like Kail and Hickmann (1992) show that children are more likely to use definite reference to introduce characters to a story when they and their interlocutor were looking at a picture book together, allowing them to assume mutual, extra-textually given knowledge (cf. Hickmann et al, 1995 andSchneider andDubé, 1997). Naturally, experimental results such as these raise the question of whether any developments in the use of definite reference in Red Riding Hood is possibly an effect of a story's accompanying pictures of those characters.…”