Twenty economically disadvantaged preschoolers (mean age 3;7) were
randomly assigned to an intervention or a control group, and their
mothers' styles of eliciting narratives from their children were assessed
before and after intervention. Mothers of intervention children were
encouraged to spend more time in narrative conversation, ask more
open-ended and context-eliciting questions, and encourage longer narratives
through back-channel responses. Children's narrative and vocabulary
skills
were assessed before and after the year-long intervention
and 14 children participated in a follow-up assessment a year later.
Narrative measures included the number and length of narratives as well
as how decontextualized and informative they were. Intervention children
showed significant vocabulary improvement immediately after
intervention terminated, and a year later they showed overall improvements
in narrative skill. In particular, intervention children produced
more context-setting descriptions about where and especially when the
described events took place. Such decontextualized language has been
emphasized as important for literacy acquisition.
Exposure to Interpersonal Violence and Socioemotional Adjustment in Economically Disadvantaged Preschoolers
