Improving 5-year-olds' narrative recall and comprehension

After viewing a brief segment from a dramatic movie and discussing it with an adult, 66 5-year-old children retold the story they had seen. Their stor ies contained more advanced narrative features-problem complications, inter personal conflicts, internal states, and moral issues-than would be expecte d of children this age based on the available research literature and than were included in the stories of a comparison group of 14 children who did n ot discuss the movie with an adult. Children who discussed the movie with a n experimenter following a structured "pedagogical protocol" told more comp lex and detailed stories than those who discussed the movie informally with their mothers. The pedagogical protocol consisted of a set of questions th at focused the child's attention on critical facts and feelings in the movi e from beginning to end and corrections given in response to the child's mi sunderstandings. When children discussed the movie with their mothers, thos e whose mothers spontaneously used more questions and corrections like the ones in the pedagogical protocol exhibited significantly better recall of o bjective actions and higher levels of narrative comprehension than those wh ose mothers used fewer questions and did nor correct the children's misunde rstandings.