When all children comprehend: increasing the external validity of narrative comprehension development research

Abstract

Narratives, also called stories, can be found in conversations, children's play interactions, reading material, and television programs. From infancy to adulthood, narrative comprehension processes interpret events and inform our understanding of physical and social environments. These processes have been extensively studied to ascertain the multifaceted nature of narrative comprehension. From this research we know that three overlapping processes (i.e., knowledge integration, goal structure understanding, and causal inference generation) proposed by the constructionist paradigm are necessary for narrative comprehension, narrative comprehension has a predictive relationship with children's later reading performance, and comprehension processes are generalizable to other contexts. Much of the previous research has emphasized internal and predictive validity; thus, limiting the generalizability of previous findings. We are concerned these limitations may be excluding underrepresented populations from benefits and implications identified by early comprehension processes research. This review identifies gaps in extant literature regarding external validity and argues for increased emphasis on externally valid research. We highlight limited research on narrative comprehension processes in children from low-income and minority populations, and argue for changes in comprehension assessments. Specifically, we argue both on- and off-line assessments should be used across various narrative types (e.g., picture books, televised narratives) with traditionally underserved and underrepresented populations. We propose increasing the generalizability of narrative comprehension processes research can inform persistent reading achievement gaps, and have practical implications for how children learn from narratives.

Visual narrative comprehension: Universal or not?

“…Yet, referential continuity was hard to construe even in pairs of "before-after" frames for Bantu (Zulu and Tsonga) workers in South Africa (Winter, 1963). Several studies have found continuity interpreted less often for native Africans compared to their European counterparts, including for Bantu populations (Duncan, Gourlay, & Hudson, 1973), native South Africans (Liddell, 1996(Liddell, , 1997, with the Basotho people (Jenkins, 1978), and in Botswana (Byram & Garforth, 1980), with results modulated by age, acculturation, literacy, and exposure to graphics. Lower proficiency on the PAT was observed for young men from the Ganda tribe (Uganda), despite proficient verbal (English) and math skills (John McFie, 1961), and for illiterate compared to literate Sudanese participants, while 80% of participants "failed to respond adequately" to the PAT in a pilot study (Khaleefa & Ashria, 1995).…”

Macrostructure components in narrations of Turkish–German bilingual children

“…In children, development of narrative comprehension processes reaches a critical period between 3 and 5 years of age. From age 6, these processes continue to be refined until age 9, when sensitivity to goal structures and inferences resemble adult comprehension (Burris & Brown, 2014).…”

Editors’ Introduction and Review: Visual Narrative Research: An Emerging Field in Cognitive Science

“…Thus, assessing the development of ToM may be confounded by the concurrent development of “visual narrative fluency,” which is not measured. This confound may be a challenge to numerous domains that use visual narratives, including temporal cognition (Ingber & Eden, ; Weist, ), narrative cognition (Burris & Brown, ), and sequential reasoning (Zampini et al, ).…”