Narrative is an important aspect in studying children's language and cognitive development. Previous research on narrative has mostly analyzed children's narrative ability in both macrostructure and microstructure by using of picture-elicited narrative task. Retelling is one of the important means to study children's narrative, however, there are few studies to explore the characteristics of Chinese children's retelling skills.The present study explored the developmental characteristics of retelling skills in Chinese children aged 5-6 years using the speech/recording-presented retelling task without picture support, and investigated the relationship between retelling and verbal working memory. Sixty children were randomly selected, and divided into a 5-year-old group (n = 30, 15 boys) and a 6-year-old group (n = 30, 15 boys). Children were asked to retell the story after listening to the story. Their verbal working memory skills were measured as well.The results showed that for the narrative macrostructure development, the macrostructure in 5- to 6-year-old children's retelling demonstrated significant age differences, in which the total scores of the macrostructure of 6-year-old children was better than that of 5-year-old children. The characters, actions and consequence elements of the macrostructure were developed significantly in the 6-year-old group. A significantly main effect of gender was found, in which girls performed significantly better than boys. In particular, girls’ score was much higher than boys in the initiating event and internal response elements.From the perspective of word/sentence production on microstructure, there was a significantly main effect of age on the number of T-units, complex sentences and clauses. 6-year-old children retold more T-units, complex sentences, and more clauses in each complex sentence. A significantly main effect of gender was found on the total number of T-units, clauses and the ratio of complex sentences to T-units. Girls retold more complex sentences than boys. Morever, there was a significantly main age effect on the total number of words and length of complex sentences. 6-year-olds retold more words in the narratives and complex sentences than 5-year-olds. Meanwhile, the gender effect was also significant. Girls had a significant advantage over boys in the total number of words and number of words in complex sentences.Considering the perspective of conjunctions use on microstructure, no significant difference was found on the ratio of produced conjunctions between 6-year-olds and 5-year-olds, but the total number of conjunctions increased with age. There was a significant gender difference on the ratio of produced correct conjunctions. Girls produced more correct conjunctions than boys. The ratio of using adversative conjunctions by girls was significantly more than boy using. The ratio of the similar word replacement of adversative conjunctions in 6-year-old girls' retelling was significantly higher than that in 6-year-old boys. Girls were more flexible than boys on using adversative conjunctions.Children's verbal working memory related to many indexes on macrostructure and microstructure. The results of hierarchical regression analyses showed that children’s verbal working memory explained 13% variance in the ratio of total score on macrostructure, and significantly predicted the number of T-units and explained 16% variance. Verbal working memory is an important cognitive factor related to children's retelling skill development.
修改评论