K. Cain et J. Oakhill, THE NATURE OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COMPREHENSION SKILL AND THE ABILITY TO TELL A STORY, British journal of developmental psychology, 14, 1996, pp. 187-201
This experiment assessed the relation between children's comprehension
skill and their knowledge about stories, as measured by their ability
to tell stories from picture sequences or title prompts. To investiga
te the direction of any relation between comprehension skill and story
knowledge, the performance of 7- to 8-year-old less skilled comprehen
ders was compared to that of two control groups: same-age skilled comp
rehenders matched for reading accuracy, and younger skilled comprehend
ers matched for comprehension age. The main findings were that, althou
gh the groups did not differ in their use of conventional story featur
es, such as beginnings, settings and endings, they did differ in the q
uality of the story structure they produced, at least in the topic pro
mpt condition. Also, as predicted, stories elicited with picture promp
ts were better structured overall. In the easier, picture prompt, cond
ition the less skilled group also performed more poorly than the skill
ed group, but not significantly more poorly than the comprehension-age
match group. These results demonstrate that the differences in the st
ory knowledge, found between the same-age skilled and less skilled com
prehenders, are nor simply the result of differential experience in re
ading comprehension. Instead, they suggest that knowledge about story
structure may play a causal role in the less skilled comprehenders' co
mprehension difficulties. Possible sources of these differences are di
scussed.