=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1419/paper0113
|storemode=property
|title=The Development of Narrative Skills in Turkish-Speaking Children: A Complexity Approach
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1419/paper0113.pdf
|volume=Vol-1419
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/eapcogsci/BalabanH15
}}
==The Development of Narrative Skills in Turkish-Speaking Children: A Complexity Approach==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1419/paper0113.pdf
The Development of Narrative Skills in Turkish-Speaking Children:
A Complexity Approach
Hale Ögel Balaban (hale.ogel@gmail.com)
Department of Cognitive Science, Middle East Technical University
Üniversiteler Mahallesi, Dumlupınar Bulvarı No:106800 Çankaya Ankara/TURKEY
Annette Hohenberger (hohenber@metu.edu.tr)
Department of Cognitive Science, Middle East Technical
Üniversiteler Mahallesi, Dumlupınar Bulvarı No:106800 Çankaya Ankara/TURKEY
Abstract action” referring to the plot of the story including events and
Narrative is a complex discourse unit. Creating it requires “a
actions. The other one is the “landscape of consciousness”
joint process of event comprehension and language production” consisting of thoughts, beliefs and emotions of the story
(Trabasso & Rodkin, 1994, p.87), and perspective taking, characters. These two levels correspond to the functional
understanding and explaining behaviors and emotions of others. In distinction of Labov and Waletzky (1967) in such a way that
the present study, it is claimed that these requirements map onto the landscape of action matches with the referential function
three levels of complexity: 1) Plot complexity reflecting the while the landscape of consciousness matches with the
temporal and thematic organization of the narrative, 2) Syntactic evaluative function. Considering the functions of narrative
complexity expressing the coherent causal, temporal and logical and its organization, it can be claimed that narrative is a
order of the reported events, and 3) Evaluative complexity complex discourse unit. Creating it requires “a joint process
indicating the narrator’s perspective toward the events. The aim of of event comprehension and language production (Trabasso
the present study was to examine the development in each level & Rodkin, 1994, p.87), and perspective taking,
and their relationships with each other. Moreover, the contribution
understanding and explaining behaviors and emotions of
of Theory of Mind (ToM), executive function and the
comprehension of complex syntactic structures to each level was others. In the present study, these requirements were
analyzed. One hundred and five Turkish-speaking children in 4 age claimed to correspond to three levels of complexity.
groups (3&4, 5,7&8, and 10&11years) and 15 adults participated
in 1.Elicitation of narratives task, 2. Emotional Stroop Task, 3.
First- (for 3- to 4-year-old children) and Second-order (for older Plot complexity The plot is defined as the sequence of
children and adults) ToM tasks, 4. Real-apparent emotion task (for events connected to each other to construct a meaningful
3- to 4-year-old children), and 5. Comprehension of complement whole (Bruner, 1990). The plot line includes three main
clauses task. As expected, preliminary results indicated components: 1. the onset referring to a starting event, 2. the
developmental increases in plot complexity. Evaluative complexity unfolding referring to the extension of the events in the
and syntactic complexity were found to be positively related. story, and 3. the resolution including reaching to an outcome
Moreover, all levels of complexity correlated with executive (Berman & Slobin, 1994). They reflect the temporal and
function and plot complexity was also related to the thematic organization of the narrative which can be achieved
comprehension of sentential complements. ToM was not related to
any level of complexity. The significance of these findings for the
through the comprehension of the events by the narrator
development of narrative skills will be discussed. (Berman & Slobin, 1994). Thus, it seems to be relevant for
the referential function of narrative.
Keywords: narrative skills; complexity; ToM; cognitive
development
Evaluative complexity During narrating, sometimes the
Introduction narrator departs from the plot and incorporates his/her
evaluation into the narrative (Bamberg & Damrad-Frye, 1991).
Narrative as a complex discourse unit S/he reports the mental states of the characters, describes the
Narrative is a type of discourse referring to goal-directed reasons or outcomes of the events and the behaviors of the
events that are sequenced in a causal and temporal order story characters, or integrates his/her own viewpoint into the
(Aksu-Koç & Tekdemir, 2004). According to Labov and narrative. These expressions fulfill the evaluative function of
the narrative as parts of the landscape of consciousness
Waletzky (1967), it has two main functions. Its referential
(Bamberg & Damrad-Frye, 1991). Moreover, they also reflect
function is to express the events in sequenced clauses that
the point of the narrative (Labov & Waletzky, 1697), i.e.”
reflect the temporal order of the events. The other function,
why the events narrated are worth relating and paying
the evaluative function, refers to the expression of the
narrator’s interpretation of and attitude towards the attention to” (Thompson & Hunston, 2001, p.12) and the
referential components. Labov (1997) describes this organization of the narrative discourse. Bamberg and
function as follows: “evaluation of a narrative event is Damrad-Frye (1991) suggested five categories with
information on the consequences of the event for the human evaluative functions: 1) frames of mind including references
needs and desires” (p. 403). Bruner (1986) identified two to feelings and mental states of the characters, 2) causal
levels of organization of narrative. One is the “landscape of connectors explaining the motivations of
680
the characters and the reasons of the events, 3) character complexity; and the relationship between each of these
speech including direct and indirect quotation of the speech levels and some relevant cognitive abilities such as ToM
of the characters, 4) hedges expressing the likelihood of the was examined to shed light on the narrative abilities of
events according to the narrator, and 5) negative qualifiers children, Mäkinen et al. (2014) proposed that a
stating the discrepancy between the expectations and real multidimensional analysis will provide a better account of
events or referring to the failures. These evaluative children’s narrative skills. In recent years, some research
expressions are related to the comprehension of events and included the developmental patterns in different levels of
the interpretation of the behaviors and emotions of the complexity in combination with each other.
characters in narrative.
Regarding the relationship between the levels of plot
The development of the use of the evaluative devices was complexity and syntactic complexity, Hakala (2013; as
examined in several studies indicating changes with age and cited in Mäkinen et al. ,2014) found that among 5-year-old
culture (Bamberg & Damrad-Frye, 1991; Berman & Finnish-speaking children’s narratives those which were
Slobin,1994; Cortazzi & Jin,2001; Küntay & Nakamura, rich in content included more number of words. Likewise,
2002). In the literature, Theory of Mind (ToM) was Soodla and Kikas (2011) reported a positive correlation
addressed as a predictor of children’s ability to construct between the number of plot elements and the total number
narratives with evaluative complexity (e.g. Astington, 2004; of words (TNW) in the narratives of Estonian children.
Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985; Capps, Losh, & Mäkinen et al. (2014) extended these findings further to
Thurber, 2000; Fernández, 2011). On the other hand, there are fictitious narratives of 4- to 8-year-old Finnish children.
empirical findings suggesting that narrative abilities They also reported that the number of different words in
contributed to the development of ToM in preschool age type (NDW) was more related to the content of the
children (e.g. Peskin & Astington, 2004; Peterson & Slaughter, narratives than TNW.
2006). Studies with older children did not support the Beck, Kumschick, Eid and Klann-Delius (2012)
relationship between the evaluative complexity and ToM demonstrated that the use of evaluative devices was
(Longobardi, Spataro, & Renna, 2014; Meins, Fernyhough, positively correlated to the extent of the use of plot
Johnson, & Lidstone, 2006) and imply a dynamic components in the narratives of 7- to 9-years-old German-
developmental relationship between these two abilities. speaking children.
Despite the fact that some studies provided some insight
Syntactic complexity The organization of narrative is into the relationships between different levels of complexity,
reflected through the syntactic complexity, because the they are limited in some aspects. First of all, the
syntactic structures are means to express the coherent relationships between plot, syntax and evaluation in
causal, temporal and logical order of the reported events. narratives were secondary or minor topics in most of these
Recursion is one type of syntactic complexity. It is defined studies. Moreover, none of these studies cover different
as embedding a clause inside another clause (Chomsky, developmental periods or wide age ranges although research
1965). It allows unlimited linguistic creativity, because in has shown that patterns might change with age (e.g.
principle, there is no upper limit to the number of embedded Longobardi et al., 2014; Meins et al., 2006). In the present
clauses in a single sentence (Fitch, 2005). One way to create study, these problems were overcome in order to give a
recursive hierarchies is subordination. Research has shown better account of children’s narrative skills.
that children acquire complex clauses with subordination
during the period of 2 to 4 years of age (Diesel & Present Study
Tomasello, 2001). This time period matches with the period
of ToM development. This temporal coincidence hints at The first aim of the present study was to examine the
(but does not prove) a possible causal relation between the development of Turkish-speaking children’s narrative skills
two domains. related to different levels of complexity, namely plot
complexity, evaluative complexity and syntactic
Fitch (2005) claimed that only humans are able to embed complexity. Moreover, how the development in each type of
the representation of other minds into the representation of complexity is related to executive function, ToM and the
their own minds through ToM and this is the precursor for ability to comprehend and reproduce complex syntactic
the ability to form syntactically complex, embedded structures was studied.
structures.
Alternatively, de Villiers and de Villiers (2003) argued Method
that the structural complexity of languages contributes to Participants
ToM development. This relationship was supported (e.g. de
Villiers & Pyers,1997; 2002) . Eight-teen 3- and 4-year-olds (M= 52 months, SD= 4.25,
range= 45-59.5 months; 11 boys and 7 girls), 22 5-year-olds
(M= 64.05 months, SD= 3.67, range= 60-70 months; 11 boys
Relations between the levels of complexity Although
children’s narratives were analyzed separately according to and 11 girls), 33 7- and 8-year-olds (M= 93.18 months, SD=
plot complexity, evaluative complexity and syntactic 5.24, range= 84-105 months, 12 boys and 21 girls), 32 10-
and 11-year-olds (M= 134.97 months, SD= 5.16, range=
124-143 months, 16 boys and 16 girls); and 15 adults (M=
254.40 months, SD= 9.93, range= 243-278 months, 2 boys
681
and 13 girls) participated in the study. All participants were Transcription and coding
hearing native Turkish speakers and belonged to middle
socioeconomic class.
Video-recordings of the narratives were transcribed by the
experimenter using EUDICO Linguistic Annotator (ELAN).
Instruments It was developed at the Max Planck Institute for
Elicitation of narratives task: The experimenter presented Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, Netherlands to analyze
Mayer’s 24-page wordless picture book ‘Frog, where are language, sign language and gestures
you?’ (1969) to the participants and asked them to tell a (http://tla.mpi.nl/tools/tla-tools/elan/,Lausberg & Sloetjes,
story while looking at the pictures. 2009).
Emotional Stroop Task: The Emotional Stroop Task Coding criteria for the levels of complexity
developed by Lagattuta, Sayfan and Monsour (2011) was Plot complexity: Plot complexity was coded according to
used as a measure of executive function. The experimenter the presence of the subcomponents regarding plot onset, plot
presented 10 cards displaying a yellow cartoon happy face unfolding, resolution and search theme suggested by
and 10 cards displaying a yellow cartoon sad face to the Bermand and Slobin (1994) for the book ‘Frog, where are
participants one by one in a random order. The participants you?’ (1969). The presence of each subcomponent
had to respond saying “üzgün’sad’” to the happy face and received 1 point. The ratio of the participants’ total points
“mutlu ‘happy’” to the sad face. The total number of correct to the maximum possible total score was computed as the
responses was calculated to evaluate the participants’ plot complexity score.
performance on this task.
Evaluative complexity: In literature there was no consensus
First-order ToM Task: The change of location task on the coding categories for evaluation (Shiro, 2003). In the
developed by Wimmer and Perner (1983) was used to assess present study, a) mental state terms referring to emotional
ToM abilities of 3- and 4-year-old children. states, motivation/ability, affect expression and cognitive
states; b) hedges; c) enrichment expression; d) evaluative
Real-apparent emotion task: To assess 3- and 4-year-old remarks; d) causative expressions; e) contrastive
children’s ability to differentiate between the emotion a expressions; f) character speech; g) negative qualifiers were
person feels and the emotion a person displays, the real- coded as evaluative categories. As the evaluative complexity
apparent emotion task included in Wellman and Liu’s score, the percentage of the number of clauses with at least
(2004) ToM scale was used. one evaluative device to the total number of clauses was
computed.
Second-order ToM task: To assess ToM abilities of 5-, Syntactic complexity: The total number of the C-units
7-, 8-, 10- and 11-year-old children and adults, the second- described as a main clause with its subordinate clauses, the
order false-belief task developed by Flobbe (2006) and total number of words (TNW), the mean length of C-units
adapted to Turkish by Arslan (2011) was administered. The (MLCU), the total duration of the narrative and the mean
experimenter told two stories to the participants. During the duration of a C-unit were included to analyze the general
story telling, she presented drawings depicting the stories to linguistic structure of the narratives. The score of the
foster the comprehension of the stories and asked questions syntactic complexity was the percentage of the number of C-
regarding the details. units with at least one subordinate clause to the total number
of C-units.
Comprehension of Complement Clauses Task: Altan
(2008) developed a task to assess children’s ability to Results & Discussion
comprehend complement clauses inspired by a task
developed by Crain and Nakayama (1987; as cited in Data from adult participants were excluded from the
Thornton, 1996) and revised by Thornton (1996). On this statistical analyses and considered only for comparison. To
task, the experimenter presented clauses including object test the developmental change in three levels of complexity,
nominalizations formed with the suffixes –mA, -mAK, - a 4 (age) x 3(levels of complexity) MANOVA with age as
DIK and –(y)AcAK (e.g.“Kaplumbağaya kutuda ne the independent variable and the scores of plot complexity,
olduğunu sandığını sorar mısın?” ‘Can you ask the mouse evaluative complexity, and syntactic complexity as the
what he thinks there is in the box?’) as complement dependent variables was conducted. Using Pillai’s trace,
clauses. The participants were expected to direct the there was a significant effect of age on the levels of
questions embedded in these clauses to a puppet introduced complexity, V=.52, F(9,300)= 7.004, p<.001. However,
at the beginning of the task (e.g. “Kutuda ne olduğunu separate univariate ANOVAs on the dependent variables
sanıyorsun?” What do you think there is in the box?”). The revealed only a significant effect on the plot complexity,
testing trials included six single-embedded and six double- F(3.100)=24.53, p<.001. As shown in Figure 1, post-hoc
embedded clauses in a random order. analyses revealed that 3- and 4-year-old children’s plot
complexity score was lower than that of children in other age
groups. Moreover, the plot complexity score of 5-year-old
children was lower than that of children in the older age
682
groups. This suggested that with age, children’s narratives This implied that the evaluative richness increases with age.
include more plot components and gain a full structure
including the elements regarding the onset, the unfolding The lack of developmental change in the syntactic
and the resolution of the narrative. complexity and the low rate of complex clauses as shown in
Figure 3 suggested that children in all age groups preferred
simple sentences without any subordinate clause over
complex ones in their narratives.
Figure 1: Mean ratio of participants’ total plot
complexity scores over the maximum possible
total plot complexity score by age. Error bars
represent standard errors. Figure 3:Mean syntactic complexity score. .
Error bars represent standard errors.
Figure 2 displays that in each age group 20 to 30% of the
clauses in the narratives included at least one evaluative A qualitative analysis of the use of different types of
device. The lack of any developmental change in the subordinate clauses showed that in 3- and 4-year-old
evaluative complexity suggested that between the ages of 3 participants’ narratives, most of the subordinate clauses were
and 11 years the extent of the use of evaluative devices does noun clauses. This distribution changed with age. Five-year-
not change. old participants constructed noun and adverbial clauses to
the same extent whereas older participants formed more
adverbial clauses than noun clauses. These findings suggest
a change in the structure of complex sentences in narratives
with age.
To analyze the relationship between the three levels of
complexity, correlation analyses were run. Partial
correlations with age (in months) controlled showed that the
evaluative complexity score was significantly correlated
with the syntactic complexity score, r=.48, p<.001.
To analyze the cognitive underpinnings of the levels of
complexity, correlation analyses were computed. Partial
correlations with age (in months) controlled indicated that
scores of all levels of complexities were significantly
correlated with the score on the Emotional Stroop Task
(r=.20, p<.05 for evaluative complexity, r=.27, p<.01 for
plot complexity, and r=.23,p<.05 for syntactic complexity).
This suggests that the executive function is related to the
formation of the narratives. Furthermore, the plot complexity
score was found to correlate with the score on the
Figure 2: Mean evaluative complexity Comprehension of the Complement Clauses Task,
score by age. Error bars represent r=.30,p<.01. Contrary to the expectations, ToM scores were
standard errors. not related to any level of complexity.
Further results of regression analyses will shed light on the
However, a qualitative analysis of the rate of the use of predictive effect of ToM, executive function and the
evaluative categories indicated that with age children started comprehension of sentential complements on each level of
to integrate various elaborative devices into their narratives. complexity. The significance of the findings will be
For example, 3- and 4-year-old and 5-year-old participants discussed in terms of the development of narrative skills and
did not use any hedges and evaluative expressions, and the its underlying cognitive mechanisms.
youngest participants did not also use any causative markers
whereas there were no missing evaluative categories in the
narratives of 7- and 8- and 10- and 11-year-old children.
683
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