The expression of emotions and beliefs in the narratives of 5 –to-10 year-old children : Effects of a conversational intervention procedure

Presented within the Symposium “The development of emotional competence: correlational and training studies”Background. The capacity to express emotions and beliefs in an articulate way is central to social communication. Children start early to express emotions in their everyday conversation with familiar partners and can refer to them to narrate personal experiences. However, talking about the internal world of the characters of a story is a later competence, undergoing development through 10-12 years. Since narrative abilities are predictive of literacy and academic achievements, finding a way to help children develop their skills in this domain appears an important goal. Aims and Method. This paper studies the effects of a conversational interaction procedure on children's production of coherent, emotion and belief-based, narratives in 120 children aged 5 to 10 years. Children were shown a sequence of five wordless pictures depicting a story based on a misunderstanding between two characters, and were requested to narrate the story when the pictures were not present anymore (first narrative). Then, half of the children were asked to explain the reasons behind the events, probing their comprehension of the story, while the other half played a Memory game with the story pictures and their variants. All children were then asked to recount the story (second narrative). Results. Results show that many of the children who participated in the conversational procedure produced second narratives that were more coherent than their first narratives, with events explained by the emotional and belief states of the characters. Instead, no significant changes between first and second narratives occurred in the control group. Conclusions. A conversation focused on the motivations behind actor-caused events, leads children to improve their expression of emotional and belief states of the characters. The discussion will focus on the cognitive processes that are solicited by interventions procedures: changes in executive functions or in deeper-seated developmental constructions