Learning to Tell Coherent Personal Narratives: Linkages to Mother-Child Reminiscing Over Time

Longitudinal and concurrent predictors of children\u27s narrative coherence are identified and used to model pathways to coherence. Narrative coherence in children\u27s independent narratives was measured at 72-months using a multidimensional (context, chronology, and theme) coding system. Fifty-three potential predictors of children\u27s narrative coherence were considered, including children\u27s vocabulary scores, metamemory knowledge, and measures derived from observations of mothers\u27 and children\u27s talk during reminiscing conversations recorded when the children were 54 and 72 months old. Optimal Data Analysis was used to generate three classification tree models to identify variables associated with whether children were low or high on three dimensions of narrative coherence. The optimal predictors of each of the three dimensions of children\u27s narrative coherence were unique, and yet all reflected aspects of talk in the mother-child reminiscing task. Results demonstrated support for the role that social factors play in the development of narrative coherence in childhood