Maternal scaffolding and children's narrative retelling of a movie story

Five-year-old children (n = 31) watched a brief videotaped segment from a m ovie with their mother, discussed the movie story with her, and then retold it to an experimenter. The quality of the stories the children told was re lated to the scaffolding strategies used by their mothers. Children whose m others focused their own and the children's attention on the story, prompte d the children's memories with questions and explanations, talked about the characters' emotions, corrected the children's mistakes, and engaged in ex tended exchanges about critical topics in the story during the preparatory discussion told significantly better stories than children whose mothers di d not use such strategies and children in a control group (n = 14) who did not discuss the story with their mothers. Children's recall of objective ac tions in the story was most strongly predicted by joint mother-child attent ion, extended exchanges on critical topics, and the mother's correction of the children's mistakes. Children's comprehension of characters' internal s tates was most strongly predicted by the number of questions the mother ask ed, extended exchanges, and correction. These findings have implications fo r how adults can promote children's ability to understand, remember, and na rrate a story.