A SOCIAL INTERACTIONIST ACCOUNT OF DEVELOPING DECONTEXTUALIZED NARRATIVE SKILL

The ability to produce decontextualized language is a crucial skill underlying literacy acquisition. This study investigated the role of parental interaction styles on children's developing skill at providing contextual orientation in one type of decontextualized discourse, personal experience narratives. A researcher elicited narratives monthly for 18 months from 10 children age 26-43 months. At intervals, mothers were asked to tape record ''talk about past events'' with their children. The children's increasing skill at independently providing context about when and where was correlated with mothers' frequencies of using specific types of prompts in their narrative elicitations. Cross-lagged correlations showed that parents who frequently prompted for context orientation had children who most frequently provided subsequent orientation to when and where in their stand-alone narratives when they were over 3 years of age. Results were interpreted in terms of Vygotskian theory.