STORYTELLING IN CHIPPEWA-CREE CHILDREN

The structure and content of self-generated narratives were compared f or 20 traditional and 20 nontraditional Chippewa-Cree children in four age groups (5, 7, 9, and 11 years). A majority of the stories contain ed temporally and causally related events and goal-based action. MLT-u nit of the narratives was longer and highly structured stories were co nstructed more frequently with increasing age. The two traditionality groups differed developmentally in their use of obstacles and causally connected episodes. The stories of Il-year old traditional children w ere significantly more likely to contain these elements than their 5-y ear-old counterparts, whereas similar comparisons for nontraditional c hildren revealed no such developmental change. In terms of story conte nt, intrapersonal obstacles were found to be employed by the oldest gr oups only and were used more frequently by these Chippewa-Cree childre n than had been previously reported (e.g., Stein, 1988). Several later -developing aspects of story content were identified that seemed to re flect a Cree cultural influence. These results provide evidence for th e use of episodic structure by Chippewa-Cree children, but suggest tha t the developmental course for particular story structure and content can vary as a function of culture.