The Use of Causal Connections by Parents and Preschoolers during Storytelling

This poster represents preliminary results of an ongoing study. This study aims to gain an understanding of parent-child interactions in relation to children’s early narrative causal understanding. Previous research has found that the use of causal connections by young children strongly predicts reading comprehension in later years (White, van den Broek, & Kebndeou, 2007). Statements with more causal connections are generally rated as more important to the story and more likely to be remembered than irrelevant statements (van den Broek & Trabasso, 1986; van den Broek, 1989). In this study, the primary caregiver was asked to tell their child a story using a wordless picture book called “Frog Where Are You?” Later the child was asked to tell a story by themselves with the same book. These stories were coded for the types of connections made and the distance between each connection. While the study only included seven subjects, some significant correlations were found. As children get older, they tend to use more complex types of connections and rely less on more simple connections. Parent stories tended to have patterns similar to children’s stories; however, these patterns were not significant