The Development of Coherence in Narratives: Causal Relations

The Development of Coherence in Narratives: Causal Relations Wen-hui Sah Department of English, National Chengchi University whsah@nccu.edu.tw Abstract This study explored Mandarin-speaking children’s ability in maintaining narrative coherence. Thirty Mandarin-speaking five- year-olds, 30 nine-year-olds and 30 adults participated. The narrative data were elicited using Frog, where are you? Narrative coherence was assessed in terms of causal networks. The results displayed children’s development in achieving narrative coherence by establishing causal relations between narrative events. Results were considered in relation to capacities for working memory and theory of mind. Narrators’ differences in communicative competence and cognitive preferences were also discussed. 1 Introduction Previous research relied on a variety of schemes to explore how narrators relate categories of information in a narrative (e.g., Berman and Slobin, 1994; Trabasso et al., 1992). Some researchers examine narrative structure (Peterson and McCabe, 1983); some concern more about the conceptual basis for relating narrative information (Trabasso and Nickels, 1992; Trabasso et al. 1992). Regarding cognitive processing, capacities for working memory and theory of mind were considered relevant to a narrator’s ability to organize and integrate narrative information (Trabasso et al., 1992). Given the significant role of narratives in children’s development (Chang, 2004), the present work aimed to explore Mandarin- speaking children’s progress in relating events and hence in maintaining coherence in narratives. One intriguing assumption of the research by Trabasso et al. (1992) is that narrators tend to encode a protagonist’s actions as relevant to a goal plan. They suggested that knowledge of goal/plans serves as the conceptual basis under- pinning narrative representations. Children, with increasing age, were found to be more advanced in applying knowledge of goal/plans to integrate narrative events coherently. Acknowledging the significance of goal/ plan knowledge aside, Trabasso et al. (Trabasso and Sperry, 1985; Trabasso and van den Broek, 1985) indicated that it is causal inferences that unite elements (such as goals, actions, and outcomes) in a goal-plan. Similarly, Stein and Albro (1997) suggested that causal reasoning is required to organize content and structure coherently. In other words, causal relation is regarded as a basic mechanism for integrating episodic and thematic information. As Karmiloff- Smith (1985) indicated, coherence refers to global representation of story meaning and connectedness, which is embodied in the temporal and causal structure of a story. Given the significance of causal relations for narrative construction, Trabasso and Sperry (1985) outlined procedure to identify causal networks so as to assess causal connectivity between linguistic units in a narrative. Research has shown that causal networks provide explanations for variance in story recall (Trabasso et al., 1984). In particular, compared with measures of story grammar, causal networks were found to be a more reliable predictor of story recall (Trabasso and van den Broek, 1985). Research has also shown that the derived causal connections correlated with the importance ratings for narrative events (Trabasso and Sperry, 1985). Additional credence of the predictive power of causal networks is given by Diehl et al.’s (2006) research, which revealed that the system of causal networks is a potential …

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