developing narrative interpretation, structural and content analyses

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Developing narrative interpretation: Structuraland content analyses

Randy Genereux1* and Anne McKeough2

1Mount Royal College, Canada2University of Calgary, Canada

Background. Narrative thought is a primary mode of human cognition thatunderpins key human capabilities such as meaning-making and social-psychologicalunderstanding.

Aims. We sought to further our understanding of the development of narrativethought during adolescence, particularly in terms of the structure and content ofnarrative interpretations.

Sample. Participants were 151 grade 4 to grade 12 students from six schools in amajor urban centre in Western Canada. They included average and high-averagestudents.

Methods. A cross-sectional design was used with four age groups: 10, 12, 14 and 17years. Participants read a short story incorporating two substories and multiple layersof meaning. They then summarized it, described the two main characters, generatedstory morals and answered multiple choice interpretation questions. Responses werescored for both structural complexity and social-psychological content of narrativethought. Multivariate and univariate analyses of variance were conducted to identifydevelopmental trends.

Results. A clear developmental pattern in structural complexity was discerned inwhich students were increasingly able to understand complex multiple layers ofmeaning within a story. A striking shift in social-psychological thought was alsoidentified as students demonstrated understanding that moved from an intentionalfocus on immediate and specific mental states to an increasingly interpretive focus onenduring states, character traits and second-order psychological interpretations.

Conclusion. Significant transformation occurs during adolescence in the structureand content of narrative thought as well as in capacity for the fundamental humanendeavour of meaning-making.

Stories have been a fundamental feature of human existence for millennia. Since wellbefore recorded history, we have been spinning tales with words, images, music and

* Correspondence should be addressed to Dr Anne McKeough, Division of Applied Psychology, University of Calgary, 2500University Drive NW, Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 1N4 (e-mail: [email protected]).

TheBritishPsychologicalSociety

849

British Journal of Educational Psychology (2007), 77, 849–872

q 2007 The British Psychological Society

www.bpsjournals.co.uk

DOI:10.1348/000709907X179272


dance in order to entertain, enchant, enculturate and entrance. The crafting of

compelling narratives has been enshrined as one of our highest forms of artistic

achievement. Furthermore, formal training in reading, writing and interpreting stories

has become a core component of our educational curriculum.

The mounting evidence for the pervasive significance of stories in our lives has

convinced many social scientists that narrative is much more than a form ofentertainment and art. Indeed, some theorists have concluded that narrative constitutes

nothing less than a primary form of human experience and cognition. For example,

McKeough (1992a, 1992b) has proposed that narrative represents one of the central

conceptual structures (Case, 1992) which constitute human thought. She views

narrative knowledge as the basis for overall social knowledge and understanding. In

empirical tests of this view, she has shown that training children to compose

developmentally more advanced stories can result in corresponding advances on a

broad range of social tasks (Case & McKeough, 1990; McKeough, 1992b, 1995).An even more prominent status for narrative has been advocated by Jerome Bruner

(1986, 1990). Bruner claimed that narrative constitutes one of only two basic modes of

cognitive processing, the other one being the paradigmatic mode of thought. Whereas

the paradigmatic mode organizes the world into categories and concepts, explains

natural phenomena and seeks objective truth based on evidence and proof, the narrative

mode makes sense of the social world by interpreting human actions and intentions,

organizes everyday experience and seeks plausibility and internal consistency that is life-

like. In a word, narrative thought serves the vital human function of meaning-making.Given the pervasiveness of stories in our lives and the premise that narrative is a

primary mode of human thought, what importance does the study of narrative have for

educational psychologists? According to Feldman, Bruner, Kalmar, and Renderer (1993,

p. 340), ‘ : : : the mastery of narrative models must be one of the central tasks of

cognitive development in any culture.’ Thus, coming to understand narrative models

and the development of narrative thought of youth is a critical endeavour for

educational psychologists. If narrative understanding is indeed a cornerstone for a broad

array of other important social–psychological processes, including social understanding,social interaction and identity formation, then enhancing our understanding of the

development of narrative thought has potentially far-reaching practical implications for

helping children develop in terms of overall social and psychological functioning

(McKeough, 1992b, 1995).

The primary purpose of the present study was to investigate developmental change

in narrative throughout late childhood and adolescence, focusing on two major facets,

structural complexity and social–psychological content. We also explored potential

gender differences in narrative development.

Development of the structural complexity of narrative thoughtBasic narrative structure consists of story elements – characters, events, actions and

mental states – sequentially arranged in the overall configuration of a plot (Bruner, 1990).

FollowingMandler’s (1984) description, a basic story episode consists of the following six

elements ordered sequentially: a beginning, a simple reaction, a goal, an attempt, an

outcome and an ending. Beyond the bare structure of a single story episode, narratives

can range tremendously in complexity, from a basic episode with one extra element

added on, to an extremely complex story containing many hierarchically embeddedepisodes that keep shifting the reader to and fro through story space and time.

850 Randy Genereux and Anne McKeough


Considerable research has shown that the basic story structure is typically well

mastered by about 8 years of age and that by 10 years of age children typically construct

stories at least somewhat more complex than the basic story episode, for example, by

including repeated attempts by the protagonist to achieve his/her goal (Kemper, 1984;

McKeough, 1992a; Stein & Glenn, 1979). Although little research has focused on the

development of narrative structure in adolescence, some work has been done usingCase’s (1985, 1992; Case et al., 1996) neo-Piagetian theory of cognitive development as

a theoretical framework. In his theory, Case asserted that there are four major stages of

cognitive development reflecting the assembly of increasingly complex cognitive

structures and that a central developmental trend from childhood through adolescence

is from concrete to more generalized, abstract thought. Case (1992; Case et al., 1996)

proposed that as biological maturation of the brain occurs, processing capacity or

working memory increases and is reorganized through childhood and adolescence, and

thus cognitive structures of increasingly greater complexity within any cognitivedomain are enabled. Within each of the four major stages of cognitive development,

Case (1992; Case et al., 1996) proposed recursive progress through three substages that

serve as building-blocks towards the next successive stage of development. In the first

stage, unifocal coordination, a new structure is formed but is limited to application in

isolation. Bifocal coordination, the second substage, involves two structures that can be

applied separately due to working memory limitations. The third substage, elaborated

coordination, results from a combination of increased working capacity, experience in

the domain and an ability to coordinate two or more structures simultaneously.According to Case (1992; Case et al., 1996), children enter the fourth major stage of

cognitive development by around 12 years of age. As such, they should demonstrate

emerging capacity to combine into a new structure two of the previous level narrative

units mastered by 10-year-olds, with further refinements in development at

approximately 14 and 18 years of age. Research by McKeough (2000) has supported

this hypothesis in identifying a clear shift in plot structure between ages 10 and 12, with

further refinements thereafter (see also Izard et al., 2001; Nannis, 1988). Story writers,

12-year-old, but not 10-year-old, commonly coordinate a main story set in the presentwith story events from the past to create long-standing character traits or states and a

psychological profile. By 14 years of age, additional enduring psychological states and

traits enter the picture, often in the form of contrary tendencies within the same

character that create an internal psychological conflict in addition to the outer story

conflict (McKeough, 2000; McKeough, Sanderson, Martens, & Salter 1996; Yussen &

Ozcan, 1996). Finally, by 18 years of age, adolescents are able to create a dialectic

involving the internal and external struggles of their protagonists and deal with the

conflict in a coordinated and coherent fashion, thus demonstrating the capacity tosynthesize two higher order units into a well-formed whole. A similar pattern of

structural development has been reported for two other narrative devices that require

the coordination of multiple levels of meaning or storylines: foreshadowing and trick

endings (Case, Bleiker, Henderson, Krohn, & Bushey, 1993).

Development of the content of narrative thoughtAnother dimension of narrative thought that can be examined developmentally is

content (i.e. what it is we think about when we think in story form). One key aspect of

narrative content is social–psychological understanding as reflected in an individual’s

descriptions, representations and interpretations of story characters and their actions.

Developing narrative interpretation 851


This aspect of narrative thought is closely related to what Bruner (1986, 1990) has called

meaning-making. According to Bruner (1990, p. 34), meaning-making is fundamentally

an interpretive endeavour; narrative explication is a cultural tool that ‘gives meaning to

action by situating its underlying intentional states in an interpretive system’.

McKeough (1987, 1992a) and her colleagues (Martens, 1993; Salter, 1992) examined

the development of social–psychological content in children and adolescents’narratives, social decision making and interpretations of family stories. They found

that young children (up to 4 years of age) display action/event knowledge of human

experience in terms of physical events and physical states linked in a simple sequence.

During middle childhood (6–10 years), they display an intentional understanding of

human action in terms of immediate feelings, thoughts and goals. Around 12 years of

age, children demonstrate an interpretive understanding of human action – intentional

states are taken as objects of reflection and are framed in terms of personal history

and/or long-standing psychological traits and states. The tendency to take aninterpretive meta-position to characters’ intentions increases between 12 and 18

years of age.

Other researchers have reported similar developmental trends in the content of

narrative thought (Applebee, 1978; Bamberg & Damrad-Frye, 1991; Beach & Wendler,

1987; Feldman et al., 1993; McConaughy, Fitzhenry-Coor, & Howell, 1984). For

example, both McConaughy et al. (1984) and Bamberg and Damrad-Frye (1991)

reported a shift from a pre-adolescent emphasis on physical actions and outcomes to an

emphasis by young adults on characters’ internal social–psychological responses,motivations, traits and goals.

Gender differences in narrative thought during late childhood and adolescenceDespite the ongoing widespread interest in gender differences, the issue of gender

differences in narrative thought and development has not received much research

attention (Nicolopoulou, 1996). There are several related lines of inquiry that may berelevant to possible gender differences in narrative thought and ability. These include

research on gender differences in verbal ability, writing competence, attitudes towards

writing, language usage and style, and social–psychological orientation and

understanding.

In terms of gender differences in verbal ability, while early reviews indicated a

consistent trend for females to outperform males on some verbal tasks (Hyde, 1981;

Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974), later reviews indicated that gender differences in verbal

performance have declined drastically (Feingold, 1988) and may no longer even exist(Hyde & Linn, 1988). There is a debate, however, about this conclusion, as

methodological confounds may underlie the reports of decreased gender differences

(Ruble, Martin, & Berenbaum, 2006). Regarding possible general differences in writing

competence, the findings seem more consistently supportive of gender differences,

with females typically scoring higher than males (Applebee, Langer, Jenkins, Mullis, &

Foertsch, 1990; Engelhard, Gordon, & Gabrielson, 1991; Halpern, 2000; Hyde & Linn,

1988; Purves, 1973). There is some evidence that females may hold more positive

attitudes towards writing than males (Collis & Ollila, 1986; Collis & Williams, 1987).As well, males and females may differ at least somewhat in language style. For example,

females are more interpretive and self-referential in their language style (Cooper &

Anderson-Inman, 1988; Rubin & Greene, 1992), and when compared with boys, girls

use more affiliative speech and less self-assertive speech (Leaper & Smith, 2004).



Another potential source of gender differences in narrative thought relates to

possible gender differences in social–psychological orientation. Some authors have

proposed that males and females have distinctive orientations towards important social–

psychological issues such as self-identity, relationships and morality. For example,

Chodorow (1974, 1978) proposed that males and females develop distinctive social

orientations towards others due to their different experiences during identity formation.Whereas girls are able to develop their female identity through continuing close

connection with their mother, boys must eventually differentiate and separate

themselves from their mother in order to form their male identity. As a result, females

develop a greater sense of connectedness to others and a strong relational social

orientation, whereas males develop a greater sense of individuation and a strong

positional orientation.

In her research on the development of self-representations and self-evaluations,

Harter (1999, 2006) has emphasized how socializing influences on the self can interactwith developmental changes in cognitive capacity to result in gender differences. For

example, as cognitive capacity increases from early to middle adolescence to enable

comparisons between single abstractions such as personal traits and roles, there is a

marked increase in report of opposing self-attributes and resulting intra-psychic conflict.

Interestingly, this is especially so for females; when compared with males, they are more

likely to detect contradictory self-attributes and to be upset about them. Harter’s

interpretation of this gender difference is in terms of the differential socialization of

females towards more concern with connectedness to others and maintainingrelationships. As females try to maintain the multiple relationships that develop during

adolescence and to create harmony among their various roles, opposing attributes in the

self become particularly salient and problematic. Males, on the other hand, tend to view

their multiple roles and selves as more independent and autonomous, consistent with

their socialization experience, and so experience less contradiction and intra-psychic

conflict than females.

Gilligan (1982; Gilligan & Attanucci, 1988) argued that males and females tend to

have quite different orientations towards morality. Males typically adopt a justiceorientation that emphasizes detached abstract objectivity and fair and equal treatment

for all, whereas females are more likely to adopt a caring orientation that focuses on

attending to each individual’s needs and circumstances and on maintaining positive

human relationships. A recent meta-analysis by Jaffe and Hyde (2000) provides support

for this gender difference, particularly during adolescence and young adulthood.

Two studies that have directly studied narrative gender differences in children also

provide some support for gender differences in social–psychological orientation.

Sutton-Smith (1975) found that 10-year-old boys and girls differed in strategies forresolving conflict in their stories, with girls emphasizing alliances and boys emphasizing

domination. Nicolopoulou (1996) found that stories of pre-schoolboys tended to be

organized around conflict, movement, disruption and relatively disconnected

characters, whereas those of pre-schoolgirls tended to centre around connected

characters embedded in stable and harmonious social relations and specified physical

settings, such as the protagonist’s home.

Regarding adeptness at social understanding and interpretation, findings are mixed.

For example, whereas girls are not better than boys at understanding what others arethinking or feeling, women are better than men at decoding emotions and are more

likely to take the perspective of another (Eisenberg, Martin, & Fabes, 1996).



Exactly how the various gender differences (and lack thereof) cited above may

translate into gender differences in the development of narrative interpretation is not

that apparent. However, there is enough suggestive evidence to warrant exploration of

possible gender differences within this domain. For example, given their differential

socialization towards greater emphasis on relationships and greater sensitivity to

personal contradictions and intra-psychic conflict, do female adolescents demonstratean advanced level of social–psychological understanding of human behaviour with

respect to their interpretations of narrative characters and events?

The present investigationThe primary aim of this investigation was to further our understanding of the

development of narrative thought during late childhood and adolescence. Specifically,

we examined two important aspects of narrative thought: change in structuralcomplexity and social–psychological content. A secondary aim was to obtain

exploratory data regarding potential gender differences in narrative interpretation.

Participants aged 10–17 years read a short story and then summarized it, described the

main characters, generated story morals/messages and answered multiple choice

interpretation questions. The story that formed the basis for this task was George

Hebbelinck’s The Man by the Fountain (Purves, 1973). Although this short story is, on the

surface, straightforward and easy to read, it is rich in structure and content. Structurally, it

intertwines two substories, one about anoldman and the other about a youngboy. In termsof content, multiple explicit and implicit meanings can be read from the story.

The hypotheses we tested regarding narrative development were as follows. With

respect to structural complexity, we hypothesized that older students would be able to

comprehend increasingly complex hierarchically integrated narrative structures

involving not just a single complete story, but multiple stories or levels of meaning

embedded within a larger story structure. Specifically, we predicted that the older

students, but not the younger ones, would be able to construct an integrative overall

moral or message for the two main storylines inherent in the stimulus story. Withrespect to social–psychological development, we hypothesized a shift from an

intentional understanding of human action towards an increasingly interpretive

understanding as measured by students’ story summaries, character descriptions and

responses to the multiple choice subtask.

Regarding gender differences in the content of narrative thought, we sought to

explore whether or not gender differences exist in the social–psychological content of

adolescents’ narrative interpretations. Based on previous findings that females are more

interpersonally oriented (Gilligan, 1982; Harter, 2006; Nicolopolou, 1996), moreinterpretive and self-referential in their language style (Cooper & Anderson-Inman,

1988; Rubin & Greene, 1992) and better at decoding emotions (Eisenberg et al., 1996),

we tentatively hypothesized that females may be more interpretive than males in

describing and understanding story characters and events. Given the lack of previous

research or theory directly relevant to the issue, we made no particular predictions

regarding gender and narrative structural complexity.

Method

ParticipantsParticipants in this cross-sectional study were 151 students (87 females and 64 males)

from six schools located in middle-class neighbourhoods in a major urban centre in



Western Canada. There were 40 grade 4/5 students (mean age ¼ 10 years, 4 months),

40 grade 7 students (mean age ¼ 12 years, 9 months), 35 grade 9 students (mean

age ¼ 14 years, 8 months) and 36 grade 12 students (mean age ¼ 17 years, 9 months).

These four age levels were selected as they correspond to distinct substages of cognitive

development according to Case (1985, 1992; Marini & Case, 1994). Participants at each

age level were drawn from at least two different schools, from at least two different citydistricts and from the classes of at least three different Language Arts/English teachers.

Participants included average and high-average students, as indicated by teachers and

standardized verbal achievement tests (Alberta Learning, 1996). The ratio of male to

female participants at each age level was approximately the same, with the exception of

the oldest age group in which there were considerably more girls than boys enrolled in

12th grade English courses at the three participating high schools. The participants

included 18 male and 22 female 10-year-olds, 18 male and 22 female 12-year-olds, 15

male and 20 female 14-year-olds, and 13 male and 23 female 17-year-olds.

ProcedureThe narrative response task as awhole was described to participants as one that involved

reading and answering a series of questions about a short story. The story that formed the

basis for this taskwasGeorgeHebbelinck’sThe Man by the Fountain (Purves, 1973). This

story was chosen for a number of reasons. First, it had been previously used in narrativeresponse research, in a large-scale international study on literature education (Purves,

1973). Second, although the overall storyline is quite straightforward and easy to follow,

its structure is rich in that it incorporates two substories. For each of the two main

characters, an old man and a young boy, a relatively complete story is told, including an

initiating event, internal emotional and motivational reactions, a goal, an attempt, an

outcome and an ending. Third, the story is rich in potential meanings; it is writerly in

Barthes’ (1974) sense in that it can be read on multiple levels and interpreted in many

ways. To illustrate, on the explicit, surface level the story is about an old man sitting by afountain whose sole remaining interest in life is talking to youth, and about a young

aboriginal boy who is trying to escape the tribe of grown-ups by going on a buffalo hunt.

Reading between the lines, the story is about the old man trying to stay young by playing

along with the boy, who is pretending to be a native hunter and warrior. When the old

man realizes that the boy is really planning on running away from his troubled home,

however, the oldman turns him into the police to be taken home. The story endswith the

statement that the old man is never seen again by the fountain. On a deep, interpretive

level, the story can be read as a commentary on any of a number of significant themes,including the nature of human wishes and dreams, the dangers of pretence and the

necessity of accepting one’s place in life. Thus, the story was easily understandable at a

basic level to even the youngest participants in the study and yet rich enough to be

sensitive to developmental differences in interpretative capacity.

Hebbelinck’s original story was adapted for this study as follows. A grade-referenced

vocabulary guide (Dale & O’Rourke, 1976) was used to identify and replace a number of

vocabulary terms that may have proven difficult to comprehend for the youngest

participants in this study. As well, a second version of the story was created with females,rather thanmales, as the main characters. In the alternate version, entitled The Woman by

the Fountain, a younggirlwho is trying to escape the tribeof grown-ups tobeQueenof the

Pirates meets an old woman who sits by a fountain everyday waiting to talk to children.

The twoversions of the story used in this study are available from the authors upon request.



Participants were instructed to ‘Read the story carefully so that you can understand

the meaning of the story.’ They were also informed that some of the questions were to be

answeredwithout looking back at the story, and theywere encouraged to spend as much

time as they needed to carefully read and understand the story before they began

answering the questions. Participants completed the task during one session lasting

approximately 1 hour. Arrangements were made for groups of 8–15 students toparticipate during periodswhen theywould have normally been attending Language Arts

or English Literature classes. Each group comprisedmales and females in their respective

grade levels. The version of the stimulus story (i.e. male vs. female characters) that

participants at each age level received was counterbalanced across gender.

After reading the story, participants were asked to complete the following four

subtasks: summarize the story, describe the main characters, describe the morals of the

story and answer five multiple choice interpretation questions (see below for task

details). Participants’ responses were rated on a variety of narrative measures related tostructural complexity and social–psychological content: percentage of interpretive

T-units in the story summaries, number of character descriptors, percentage of

interpretive character descriptors, structure of the overall story morals and

understanding of multiple layers of meaning as assessed by the multiple choice

questions (see below for scoring details). Raters were not informed of the age and

gender of the respondents. To assess inter-rater reliability, two raters independently

scored 20% of each of the following measures: percentage of interpretive T-units in the

story summaries, percentage of interpretive character descriptors and structure of theoverall morals. Cohen’s (1960) kappa scores for the three measures were .73, .88 and

.86, respectively, indicating acceptable reliability of the ratings.

Story summary subtaskIn the story summary subtask, students were instructed to write a short summary based

on what they considered to be the most important parts in the meaning of the story. The

summaries were scored for social–psychological understanding using McKeough et al.’s(1996) scheme for scoring narrative T-units (see Table 1). Each summary was first parsed

into T-units or terminal units. T-units are the shortest grammatically complete sentences

that a passage can be divided into without creating fragments. According to Hunt (1977,

pp. 92–93), a T-unit is defined as ‘a single clause plus whatever subordinate or non-

clauses are attached to, or embedded within, that main clause’, and a clause is defined as

‘a subject (or coordinated subjects) with a finite verb or coordinated finite verb’. Each T-

unit was then scored as either action/descriptive, intentional or interpretive

(McKeough, 2000; McKeough & Genereux, 2003).

Character description subtaskParticipants were asked to describe from memory each of the two main characters to

assess their understanding of the story characters. Brief character descriptions have been

used extensively by personal construct researchers as a measure of social–psychological

understanding and development (O’Keefe & Sypher, 1981). The subtask in this studywas

modelled after Crockett’s (1965) two-peer Role Category Questionnaire (RCQ), which isin-turn based on Kelly’s (1955) personal construct theory.

A character description rating scheme (seeTable 2)was developed for this studybased

on McKeough et al.’s (1996) tripartite classification system of narrative T-units. A cross-

section of the character description data was examined in order to identify various



subtypes and exemplars of three major types of narrative character descriptors.

According to this categorization scheme, narrative character descriptors can be classified

as either physical/demographic, intentional or interpretive. Physical/demographic

descriptors are essentially non-psychological descriptors. They include demographic

characteristics and non-evaluative roles (e.g. father, brother, neighbour) as well as

physical attributes. Intentional descriptors supply psychological information about a

character, but do not provide much insight into the unique and enduring inner nature of

the character or help us understand why the character feels or thinks the particular way

Table 1. Coding narrative T-units

(1) Action or descriptive T-units: Action T-units describe physical movement (e.g. ‘Sue got up and gotready to go to school.’), whereas descriptive T-units give information concerning settings orphysical states and events transcribed by a copula verb (e.g. ‘July 16th was the day’ and‘she was deaf.’)

(2) Intentional T-units refer to first-order mental states. They can be expressed in four ways:(a) Thoughts, needs, wishes and plans that motivate action (e.g. ‘She then decided to do just that.’)(b) A social judgment that is context specific (e.g. ‘your (you’re) doing all right for (as) a baseball

player.’) or describes a general social trait (e.g. ‘a nice boy’)(c) Affectively laden verbs that describe emotion (e.g. ‘She was really scared.’)(d) Actions or descriptions that suggest underlying mental states (‘Leave me alone! she screamed’

and ‘her cold shaky hand’)(3) Interpretive T-units refer to second-order mental states that underlie first-order mental states.

They can be expressed in several ways:(a) Justification of a mental state or social judgment with a second mental state or social judgment

[e.g. ‘Joey loved pets (first-order mental state) because he knew they wouldn’t make fun ofhim’ (second-order mental state).]. The initial clause, ‘Joey loved pets’ would have beenconsidered an intentional T-unit if it had stood alone. However, with the addition of theunderlying motivation ‘because he knew they wouldn’t make fun of him’ the entire sentenceis categorized as one interpretive T-unit.

(b) Reflection on (or taking a meta-position to) the psychological cause and effect of (1) affects(e.g. ‘On my way home I was really upset. Maybe I was really stupid coming here. I tried to stop aproblem and all I did was create another one.’); (2) cognitions (e.g. ‘Joey hadn’t realized that ifhe had told them earlier it would have been much easier to face the facts.’) and (3) socialsituations (e.g. ‘But remember there are always those few kids that are left out of everything,are loners and don’t really care what they do. In other words, they’re different thaneveryone else.’)

(c) Statements denoting self-understanding, self-knowledge and self-questioning (e.g. ‘I was knownto suck up to people. And now I know its true. Whenever someone was mad at me I wouldalways be the first to apologize. Even if it wasn’t my fault.’)

(d) Enduring psychological/social state or trait (e.g. ‘Teasing and nagging would always ring in hisears during the night.’)

(e) Psychological/social similes and metaphors (e.g. ‘So now it’s like the whole world has closed uparound me.’ and ‘The wall had started to build. Not a wall of concrete or stone but a mentalwall that no one, except for Rachel herself, could move or tear down.’)

(f) Flashback and foreshadowing (e.g. ‘I thought about the first time I met her in grade one.’ and‘That was one promise I wished I had kept.’)

(g) Paradoxical consequences or juxtaposed alternatives (e.g. ‘And poor Laurie. An innocent girlwho got what she did not deserve : : : Things like this sometimes happen.Too often though.’)

(h) Perspective taking (e.g. ‘“I am sixteen and mature enough to handle the responsibility of avacation alone.” No. That would be no good it sounded to superior.’)



Table 2. Coding scheme for narrative character descriptors

Type† Subtypes

Physical/demographic† Physical appearance (attire counted as one descriptor)† Demographic info or category (including possessions)† Age, nationality, where or when character lives or lived, type of being, socio-economic status

(e.g. ‘the dog/game/car belongs to Joe’, ‘She lived in 1932’, ‘: : : had lived there his wholelife’, ‘lived in a large crowded city’, man, girl, devil, dragon, person, dog, animal, human,bird, creature)

† Non-evaluative roles such as an occupation or relationship (e.g. son, father, priest, sorcerer,boss, welder, teacher, family, coach, teammate)

† Non-psychological behaviours (e.g. ‘She skis/plays tennis.’)† Non-psychological abilities (e.g. ‘He is a good skier/driver/athlete.’)

Intentional† Evaluative social roles (e.g. friend, best friend, crony, enemy, lover)† Endearing relationship labels: ‘my love’, ‘honey’, ‘dear’, etc.† Temporary psychological states (emotions, cognitions and desires)

W Explicit (directly stated, including hunger, tiredness, want, need, yearning, wish, hope,have to, like, hate, love (unless enduring and significant), certain, sure, pain, feltsad/brave/alone/scared/hopeful/proud/great, thought, remembered, knew, understood,found herself, realize, meant, pictured, confused, concentrated, carefully, studied, waited,learned, pretended, ignored) Coded as two descriptors: ‘I think I know : : : ’, ‘He wantedto know : : : ’

W Implicit (inferable from outward behaviour, e.g. smile, frown) Exclamatory terms: wow!Ow! yikes! Look out! Acts: screamed, ran away, cried, paced silently, walked hand-in-hand, kissed, cuddled up, saying ‘thanks’, etc.

† Specific psychological/social behaviours (e.g. talks to strangers, teases Fred, will not go intoa boat without an adult)

† Specific psychological/social abilities or knowledge (e.g. good at math)† Specific psychological/social attitudes or beliefs (e.g. believes that abortion is unacceptable)† Global likes and dislikes (e.g. ‘I like him’, ‘she doesn’t like me’)† General, undifferentiated traits (e.g. mean, nice, bad, good, geek, nerd, great, evil)† Overall popularity

Interpretive† Enduring psychological states such as emotions, cognitions, desires (e.g. enduring depression,

guilt, anxiety, sorrow, resentment, jealousy, love, a recurrent memory, dream, nightmare,desire, wish)

† General psychological/social behaviours (e.g. talkative, always takes risks, usually acts withoutthinking, lies regularly)

† General psychological/social abilities (e.g. smart, socially skilled, good leadership skills, goodproblem solver)

† General psychological/social attitudes or beliefs (e.g. racist, believes in principle of fairness,thinks life is worth living no matter what, thinks she can do anything)

† Personality traits (e.g. introverted, insensitive, responsible, selfish, ferocious, has charisma, is abully, a hero, a ladies’ man)

† Differentiated general traits (e.g. shy when in a large group but extroverted with friends)† Conflicting/dialectical personality traits† Explicit explanation/interpretation of traits (e.g. in terms of past history)



he/she does. Intentional descriptors include evaluative social roles and popularity,

temporary mental states (e.g. happy, angry, confused), specific social/psychological

attitudes, abilities and behavioural tendencies and undifferentiated global traits (e.g. mean,

good, nice). Interpretive descriptors provide insight into the unique and enduring inner

nature of the character and/or help us understand why the character feels or thinks the

particular way he/she does. They often describe cross-temporal or cross-situationalcharacteristics that enable understanding and prediction across different times and places.

They may inform us of enduring psychological states, personality traits and general

social/psychological attitudes, abilities and behavioural tendencies. Interpretive

descriptors may take the form of second-order psychological statements wherein one

mental state is explained in terms of another or wherein a personality characteristic is

explained in terms of the character’s personal history and/or cultural context.

Story morals subtaskNote that this task was not intended to assess the moral development of the participants,

but instead to assess the participants’ comprehension of story morals/meanings. More

specifically, this task was designed to assess the participants’ ability to construct an

integrative overall moral or message for the two main storylines inherent in the stimulus

story, in addition to their ability to construct a moral/message for each of the two main

characters’ stories. For this task, participants were encouraged to look back at and

reread the story before answering the following three questions (these are for theversion of the story with male characters):

(1) Moral or message of the story about the boy: in a way, this story is made up of two

stories, one about the boy and the other about the man, John Deweck. What do

you think is the moral or message of the story about the boy?

(2) Moral or message of the story about the man: in a way, this story is made up of two

stories, one about the boy and the other about the man, John Deweck. What do

you think is the moral or message of the story about the man?(3) Overall moral or message: in a way, this story is made up of two stories, one about

the boy and the other about the man, John Deweck. If you think about the two

stories as a whole, what do you think is the overall moral or message of both stories

combined?

A scoring scheme for the morals subtask was developed for this study based on Case’s

(1992; Case et al., 1993) theoretical proposal that between 10 and 18 years of age, four

substages of structural development should be apparent in narrative reasoning. A cross-section of the data was examined and analysis indicated that four distinct levels of

development were discernible, resulting in the scoring scheme shown in Table 3. The

four levels represent a progression in structural integration from being essentially unable

to combine the two separate morals at Level 0 to finally being able to integrate the two

morals into a truly coordinated and balanced structure at Level 3 (i.e. a superordinate

moral that fully subsumes the two individual morals into one whole).

Multiple choice subtaskThe final subtask consisted of a set of five multiple choice questions about the story

designed to tap additional information about the ability of participants to comprehend

and make inferences about integrative themes and multiple layers of meaning in



narratives. This multiple choice task was also included to enhance the potential

generalizability of the findings across different question formats. It can be argued that

younger children may show better relative performance when they just have to

recognize and select the best multiple choice answer than when they must generate and

coherently compose their own answers to open-ended questions. Including this smallset of multiple choice questions allowed for a partial check of that possibility. The five

questions asked participants to select the best answer for each of the following: (a) the

overall moral of the story; (b) what the fountain in the story symbolized; (c) what

foreshadowed the unhappy events occurring at the end of the story; (d) the most

important way in which the two main characters were similar and (e) why the old

man/woman never returned to the fountain again.

To score the multiple choice subtask, five English Literature college instructors

independently completed the task. For each question, the five instructors unanimouslyselected the same best answer. These answers (see italicized answers in Appendix A)

were then used as the ‘correct’ ones and each participant was assigned a score of 1–5 for

this subtask by counting his/her number of correct answers.

Results

To determine the effects of age and gender on the narrative measures, a 4 £ 2

(age £ gender) multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was first conducted, with

Table 3. Structural scoring scheme for the story morals subtask

Level General description, subtypes and examples

0 Unable to combine or integrate the two separate moral/storylines(a) No overall moral provided (e.g. no answer, ‘I don’t know.’)(b) Repetition of one of the separate morals (e.g. ‘Don’t skip school.’)(c) A moral that is not clearly relevant to either storyline (e.g. ‘If you want

something, go ask for it.’)1 Able to partly combine the two separate morals/storylines, but not able to integrate

or coordinate them very well.(a) A moral relevant to one storyline but not clearly relevant to the other(e.g. ‘Imagination is a wonderful thing.’)(b) Simple additive chaining of the two separate morals (e.g. ‘Don’t run away

and don’t break promises.’)(c) An overly general, undifferentiated moral (e.g. ‘Be nice to one another.’)

2 Able to coordinate and integrate the two separate morals/storylines.(a) Chaining together two separate morals that have a related theme (e.g. ‘Don’t

trust people you don’t know and don’t betray the trust invested in you.’)(b) Comparing and/or contrasting the two characters or the two age groups involved (e.g.

‘Two people who are lonely try to find companionship with two different approaches.’)3 Able to fully coordinate and integrate the two separate morals/storylines in a sophisticated

manner(a) A superordinate moral that equally subsumes the two separate morals/storylines

(e.g. ‘No matter what the adult world will trap you.’)(b) A balanced juxtaposition of the two separate morals/storylines (e.g. ‘What you think is

the right thing to do may be the wrong thing to do. What you thing is the wrong thing todo may be the right thing to do.’)



the five narrative measures (% interpretive T-units in the story summaries, total number

of character descriptors generated, % interpretive character descriptors, overall story

moral structure and score on the multiple choice subtask) serving as the dependent

variables. Results indicated that overall performance across the five narrative measures

was significantly affected by age level, Wilks’s l ¼ .25, F ð15; 362Þ ¼ 15:66, p , :001and by gender, Wilks’s l ¼ :90, F ð5; 131Þ ¼ 2:95, p , :05. The age £ genderinteraction was non-significant, Wilks’s l ¼ :92, F ð15; 362Þ ¼ :75, p . :05.

As a follow-up to the two significant MANOVA main effects, two sets of one-way

analyses of variance (ANOVA) were conducted to determine which particular narrative

measures were significantly affected by each of the two independent variables. As well,

for each narrative measure found to be significantly influenced by age level, the

following three pairwise comparisons were conducted to pinpoint significant

differences between successive age levels: 17-year-olds vs. 14-year-olds, 14-year-olds

vs. 12-year-olds and 12-year-olds vs. 10-year-olds. Results of the univariate ANOVAs andpairwise comparisons along with basic descriptive statistics for the narrative measures

are presented in Tables 4–6.

The ANOVAs for age level reveal a significant age effect for each of the five dependent

variables, with an increase in performance with age. The pairwise comparisons indicate

that in 9 out of 15 cases, students at the next higher age group performed significantly

better than their immediately younger counterparts on the narrative measures.

Table 4. Age and performance on the narrative measures: Descriptive statistics

Means (and standard deviations)

Age in years

Measure 10 12 14 17

No. of character descriptors 9.0 (3.2) 13.1 (5.0) 14.5 (3.8) 15.7 (4.6)Overall moral structure .4 (.6) .8 (.6) 1.7 (.7) 2.6 (.7)Multiple choice 1.9 (1.5) 3.0 (1.1) 3.8 (1.2) 4.5 (.5)% Interpretive T-units 1.2 (5.9) 2.7 (9.3) 14.4 (27.0) 31.4 (33.6)% Interpretive character descriptors 8.0 (14.1) 18.7 (18.1) 20.7 (13.5) 34.1 (17.3)

Table 5. Age and performance on the narrative measures: Univariate ANOVAs and pairwise

comparisons

ANOVAPairwise comparisons: Mean differences

Measure F 12 vs. 10 14 vs. 12 17 vs. 14

No. of character descriptors 14.37** 4.05* 1.38 1.20Overall moral structure 54.56** .38 .91* .86*Multiple choice 33.43** 1.10* .85* .72*% Interpretive T-units 15.56** 1.43 11.75 16.98*% Interpretive character descriptors 15.59** 10.67* 2.01 13.41*

Note. For each ANOVA, df ¼ 3,123. For each set of pairwise comparisons, Dunn’s procedure withBonferroni adjustment of alpha level was used to test for significance.

*p , :05; **p , :001:



The ANOVAs for gender reveal that females scored significantly higher than males ontwo out of the five measures: total number of character descriptors generated and the

multiple choice subtask. Males and females did not differ significantly on the other three

measures.

Discussion

Developmental changes in narrative thoughtThe results of this study provide compelling evidence that significant changes in

narrative thought occur during late childhood and adolescence. More specifically, three

major narrative developmental trends are indicated by the data: (a) an increase in

narrative structural capacity towards enhanced ability to deal with narratives involvingmultiple dimensions; (b) a shift in narrative social–psychological understanding from

intentional to increasingly interpretive understanding and (c) an increase in sheer

volume of output generated in response to narrative tasks. Each of these is discussed in

detail below.

Increase in structural complexityA clear developmental pattern in narrative structure is apparent from the story morals

subtask data. Most 10-year-olds either were unable to think of an overall moral for thestory they read, answering, ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I can’t think of any’, or they simply rewrote

oneof their separatemorals for the child or adult in the story. For example, one 10-year-old

provided the following three morals: Child: ‘Don’t run away.’ Adult: ‘Play along.’ Overall:

‘Don’t run away.’ A considerable number of the 10-year-olds, however, scored at the

second level of structural integration, and hence themean score for the 10-year-olds (.45)

was closer to the mid-point of the first two levels (.50) than to the first-level itself (0).

The mean scores for the 12-, 14- and 17-year-olds (.82, 1.74 and 2.60, respectively)

were somewhat lower than, but certainly in line with, the expected values of 1.00, 2.00and 3.00. The typical 12-year-old demonstrated an emerging but clearly unrefined ability

to combine two separate story morals. A common tactic was to simply chain their child

and adult morals together with the connective ‘and’, as in the following example in

which the part before the ‘and’ is the participant’s child moral verbatim and the part

after the ‘and’ his adult moral verbatim: ‘You should always think before you speak and

Table 6. Gender and performance on the narrative measures: Descriptive and univariate statistics

Means (and standard deviations)

ANOVAGender

Measure Male Female F

No. of character descriptors 11.67 (4.02) 13.88 (5.24) 6.83**Overall moral structure 1.20 (.99) 1.46 (1.15) 2.33Multiple choice 2.94 (1.53) 3.52 (1.52) 5.18*% Interpretive T-units 12.24 (26.07) 11.52 (23.54) 0.16% Interpretive character descriptors 18.57 (18.61) 21.18 (18.16) 0.13

Note. For each ANOVA, df ¼ 1; 123.

*p , :05; **p , :01.



you should be sly.’ Similarly, another 12-year-old wrote the following for her overall

moral: ‘I think basically they are both of the ones I wrote before, but well : : : just

combined.’ Other 12-year-olds took a different approach and came up with an overly

general, undifferentiated overall story moral that could encompass a wide array of

stories. Examples include ‘Be nice to one another’ and ‘Learn from life’.

In general, the overall story morals of the 14-year-olds were considerably moreintegrative than those of the younger participants. Most either involved linking together

two separate morals with a common or similar theme (e.g. ‘We should save a child’s

imagination and keep adult reason’) or highlighting a point of similarity and/or contrast

between the child and the adult (e.g. ‘Two people who are lonely try to find

companionship with two different approaches’). Interestingly, this particular type of

overall story moral was quite unique to the 14-year-olds; very few of the younger or

older participants constructed an overall story moral that directly compared or

contrasted the two characters.The 17-year-olds typically exhibited the ability to generate overall story morals

that integrated the separate morals in a finely coordinated and balanced manner,

most producing truly superordinate morals that equally subsume the two separate

storylines. The following serve as illustrations: ‘No matter what, the adult world

will trap you’ and ‘It is great to be in touch with your imagination, but you must

accept reality’.

Shift towards interpretive social-psychological contentThe second major developmental trend apparent in this study is a shift in the social–

psychological content of narrative thought from an intentional focus on immediate and

specific mental states to an increasingly interpretive focus on enduring states andcharacter traits and second-order psychological interpretations. This shift was revealed

by the story summary, character description and multiple choice subtasks. Presented

below are representative examples of responses by a 12-year-old and a 17-year-old. Each

participant’s story summary is presented in full, along with his/her character

descriptions of both the adult and the child characters.

The first example typifies a 12-year-old’s response to the story.

Story summary: ‘The story is about an old woman named Joan who loves children. She is

lonely and sits by the fountain all day. One day a little girl who pretends she is a pirate runs

to the fountain. She tells Joan that she ran away from school to escape from her parents and

teachers in a boat. Joan brings her to the police station, and the girl says she hates Joan. Joan

is never seen near the fountain again.’

Character description of the adult: ‘Old, wise, kind, lonely, husband died, knows what’s

right, loves children, sits by the fountain, eats poorly, has good sight.’

Character description of the child: ‘Young, six years old, thinks she’s a pirate, wants to be

free, dislikes parents, dislikes school, wants to run away, trustworthy, trusting, loves water,

hates meat, has good imagination.’

Apart from the greater volume of output, the key feature that distinguishes this 12-year-

old’s narrative response from a 10-year-old’s is its clear psychological orientation.Although this 12-year-old did use some physical/demographic constructs (e.g. old,

husband died, 6-year-old) to describe the characters, he predominantly described them

in terms of psychological states (e.g. lonely), desires (e.g. wants to run away) and

attitudes (e.g. loves children, hates meat). He also went beyond the immediate



information given to describe them in terms of personality traits (e.g. trustworthy,

trusting, wise), thus demonstrating an interpretive level of narrative thought. Another

notable distinction is the 12-year-old’s explicit reference to the child’s imagination and

pretending to be a pirate. In contrast to this typical 12-year-old reference, many of the

10-year-olds made no mention of pretending or imagination, and indeed from their

responses it was evident that many believed the child actually was a pirate or an Indian.This indicates just how closely bound many of the 10-year-olds were to the literal

meaning of the story (or perhaps more accurately, how strongly tied we as older readers

are to psychological inferences, as there is in fact no explicit mention at all in the story

that the child is pretending). In a similar vein, the 12-year-old included in his summary

the story’s closing line about the old woman never being seen near the fountain again.

Whereas the older participants commonly referenced this, very few 10-year-olds

mentioned it, perhaps because its significance is apparent only through inference and

interpretation.The following example of a 17-year-old’s response to the story clearly demonstrates

interpretive thought.

Story summary: ‘Joan Deweck is an old woman on the verge of death longing for youth. She

sits by a fountain all day trying to relive her youth through the young people around her. She

tries to befriend a young girl who believes herself to be a pirate. Joan learns the truth about

the girl skipping school and cannot help but play the role of the treacherous adult and

return her to her mother via the police station. She never returns to the fountain.’

Character description of the adult: ‘She is an old woman dreaming of youth. She does not

particularly like adults because they say too manymean things about people. She is troubled

by the death of her husband and has no desire to do more than sit by the fountain and think

of him and youth. Her desire to live is not very strong, her eating habits are poor. She does

nothing but sit all day. Despite her wishes she couldn’t help being an adult and in the end

she made the choice to be one.’

Character description of the child: ‘The girl is what Joan would like to be. She is the purest

symbol of youth and freedom. She too believes that adults are the enemy. She doesn’t want

to go to school or follow any roles set forth by adults. She is leery of befriending anyone

especially adults. She is pretending she is a pirate because pirates have the most freedom.’

As with a typical 14-year-old, this 17-year-old makes inferences about the characters’

dispositions (e.g. ‘Her desire to live is not very strong : : : ’), offers psychologicalexplanations for their behaviour (‘She sits by the fountain all day trying to relive her

youth through the young people around her’) and identifies conflicting tendencies

within them (e.g. ‘Despite her wishes she couldn’t help being an adult : : : ’). She also,

however, demonstrates two additional manifestations of interpretive thought

considerably more prevalent among the 17-year-olds than the 14-year-olds. First, she

enters the realm of symbols to help her interpret the story and thereby exhibits explicit

awareness of multiple levels of narrative meaning (e.g. ‘The girl is what Joan would like

to be. She is the purest symbol of youth and freedom.’). Other 17-year-olds described thefountain as a symbol of youth and vitality. Second, she acknowledges the existence and

compelling power of social roles in human life (e.g. ‘Joan : : : cannot help but play the

role of the treacherous adult : : : ’, ‘she couldn’t help being an adult’). This focus on

social roles and one’s designated place in the broader social context was a common

theme among the 17-year-olds. For example, several not only referenced the failure of

the old man/woman to return to the fountain at the end, but also interpreted it in terms

of him/her finally accepting the role of growing old.



These findings were also reflected in the multiple choice data. In answering multiple

choice questions about such aspects of the story as what the fountain symbolized and

why the old man or woman never returned to the fountain, there was a clear

progression in performance from age 10 to 17, with the older participants displaying

greater interpretive understanding. For example, whereas 100% of the 17-year-olds

answered that the fountain symbolized the liveliness and energy of youth,corresponding percentages for the 10-, 12- and 14-year-olds were 45%, 75% and 85%,

respectively. Over 32% of the 10-year-olds and 12% of the 12-year-olds selected the more

concrete answer that the fountain symbolized the beauty of water and sun. Similarly,

whereas 100% of the 17-year-olds answered that the old man or woman never returned

to the fountain because he/she finally gave up thinking he/she could be young again

(thus indicating an understanding of different roles we must accept in life),

corresponding percentages for the 10-, 12- and 14-year-olds were 45%, 70% and 94%,

respectively. Over 37% of the 10-year-olds and 15% of the 12-year-olds selected theanswer that the old man or woman would be afraid the boy would be there again and

would still be mad at him or her. As well, when asked to choose the most important way

in which the child and the old man or woman are similar to one another, 100% of the

17-year-olds selected the most abstract answer, that they both would like to be

something other than what they actually are. The corresponding percentages for the 10-,

12- and 14-year-olds were 40%, 72% and 79%, respectively. Over 22% of the 10-year-olds

selected the much more concrete answer that the old person and the child both like the

fountain, and over 17% of the 12- and 14-year-olds answered that the old person wasonce a schoolboy or schoolgirl, just like the child.

Increase in output on narrative tasksThe third general developmental trend identified in this study was a clear tendency for

older participants to produce more extensive responses to open-ended narrative tasks

than younger participants. For example, 17-year-olds generated almost twice as manycharacter descriptors (mean ¼ 15:7) than did the 10-year-olds (mean ¼ 9:0). Althoughthis finding is not surprising in that it likely reflects a general trend with age to produce

more extensive responses to open-ended tasks, the extent of the age differences

obtained is noteworthy.

Integrative age-level profilesThe findings of this study, combined with previous findings, allow for relatively rich and

coherent pictures to be drawn of the narrative thought of 10-, 12-, 14- and 17-year-olds.The narrative thought and performance of 10-year-olds is distinctive in a number of

ways. First and most simply, their sheer output on open-ended narrative tasks is clearly

the lowest of all four age groups. With respect to structural complexity, they are capable

of dealing with individual stories of at least some complexity over and above basic

episodic structure, but not with two storylines or levels of meaning simultaneously. For

example, 10-year-olds focus almost exclusively on explicit vs. implicit storylines, and

they have difficulty combining two separate story morals into an overall story moral.

This pattern of results is consistent with Case’s general portrayal of 10-year-olds as ableto operate in an integrated fashion with a single social structure but not able to

coordinate two such structures – in this case, two distinct stories or storylines.

Regarding the social–psychological content of narrative thought, 10-year-olds are the

least interpretive of the four age groups. For example, the majority of 10-year-olds



display an essential lack of interpretive orientation when summarizing a story or

describing story characters. These results support McKeough’s (1987; McKeough et al.,

1996) contention that 10-year-olds generally fail to display in their narrative reasoning an

interpretive understanding of human behaviour and experience. Instead, 10-year-olds

display intentional understanding. They clearly are operating within Bruner’s (1990)

dual landscape of consciousness and action, as demonstrated by the considerablenumber of intentional as well as action/physical T-units and character descriptors they

provide in the narrative responses. They seem to have little difficulty in understanding

and constructing basic links between outward actions and events on the one hand and,

on the other hand, the internal feelings, thought and intentions that are the immediate

causes and consequences of external events. However, they generally fail to question

the deeper significance or more distant origin of mental states; they fail to take a meta-

position on human mental states and hence show little sign of psychological

interpretation. Instead, they seem to treat standard event-mental state patterns asgivens. As a result, their narrative responses have a distinctly here-and-now flavour.

Although the narrative thought of 10-year-olds seems qualitatively far removed from

that of typical adults, the gap seems to narrow somewhat when it comes to 12-year-olds.

In terms of structural complexity, 12-year-olds typically display an emerging capacity for

dealing with two distinct stories in one, as predicted by Case et al. (1993). For example,

most 12-year-olds recognize both the explicit and the implicit storylines inherent in a

narrative, and are able to combine two separate story morals into an overall moral, albeit

often in a rudimentary manner by simply chaining them together. Regarding the social–psychological content of their narrative thought, 12-year-olds typically show at least

emerging signs of becoming interpretive beings. Rather than just taking mental states as

givens, 12-year-olds show signs of beginning to question the deeper significance or more

distant origin of mental states; they are beginning to take a meta-position on human

mental states, to treat internal experiences as potential objects of second-order

reflection and to try their hand at psychological interpretation. Their narrative

responses often move beyond the here-and-now and have a distinct psychological

flavour.By 14 years of age, the emergent but often tenuous structural and interpretive

capabilities of the 12-year-old have generally become more clearly defined. With respect

to structural complexity, 14-year-olds typically display a clear capacity for dealing with

two distinct stories in one. Most not only can combine two separate story morals into an

overall story moral, but also can do so in an integrative manner, for example, by

identifying an underlying dimension upon which two story characters can be compared

and/or contrasted. Regarding the social–psychological content of narrative thought,

14-year-olds typically demonstrate clear signs of having become interpretive beings, forexample, by often providing psychological interpretations when summarizing stories

and by performing significantly better than 12-year-olds on multiple choice tasks that tap

interpretive understanding of story events.

In 17-year-olds, we can see, if not the culmination of the development of narrative

thought, at least evidence of a further step up from the level of 14-year-olds. With

respect to structural complexity, 17-year-olds typically display a refined capacity for

integrating two separate stories into a well-coordinated whole. Most are able to generate

a higher order, truly superordinate overall story moral that equally encompasses twoseparate story morals. In terms of social–psychological content of narrative thought,

17-year-olds clearly stand out in their emphasis on describing the inner nature of

characters and interpreting the underlying meaning of their acts and experiences.



Bruner (1986, p. 37) observed that ‘Perhaps the greatest feat in the history of

narrative art was the leap from the folk tale to the psychological novel that places the

engine of action in the characters rather than in the plot.’ This historical shift highlighted

by Bruner also seems to capture the transformation that occurs in narrative thought

between late childhood and adolescence. While 10-year-olds seem to understand human

behaviour and experience largely in relation to explicit plot events, 17-year-olds seeminstead to locate the essence of human behaviour and meaning inside characters’ heads

and hearts (Feldman et al., 1993; McKeough et al., 1996).

CaveatsAlthough the predicted general trends in the development of narrative thought towards

greater structural complexity and interpretive social–psychological content were

strongly supported by the present findings, some caveats are in order. First, given that

this study was cross-sectional and focused on interpretations of a single story, it would

be worthwhile to validate and extend the findings through future studies that utilize a

longitudinal approach and multiple narrative tasks. Second, the specific findings fromthe various measures in this study were not entirely consistent with one another. At the

very least, these discrepancies caution against coming to conclusions about the precise

profile and the extent of narrative development on the basis of any single measure.

Third, although results indicate dramatic shifts in narrative thought occur between 10

and 17 years of age, they do not as strongly support the view that the four age levels

studied represent qualitatively distinct, step-like stages of narrative development.

The nature of development on several of the measures was not such that previous forms

of narrative expression and thought were entirely abandoned for new improved forms,but rather that previous forms were supplemented with new forms. This finding

suggests that at least on these types of measures, the development of narrative thought

might best be characterized in terms of Siegler’s (1996) general model of cognitive

development as a series of overlapping waves; each wave would represent the ebb and

flow of a particular narrative scheme such as action/event, intentional and interpretive

schemes. At each successive age level, one scheme may crest and dominate the others,

but the others are still accessible and put to use at least occasionally.

Finally, not all of the participants at each age level performed at the same level on thenarrative tasks. Along with general age trends in the development of narrative thought,

individual differences in narrative thought were also apparent in this investigation.

Gender and the development of narrative interpretationDo females and males aged 10–17 years differ in terms of their narrative interpretations?

According to the present results, they do to some extent, but not consistently across

measures. Significant univariate gender effectswere obtained for the number of character

descriptors in the character sketches and the number of correct answers on the multiple

choice subtask, with females scoring higher than males. However, significant gender

differences were not obtained for the other three narrative measures, including the two

that assessed interpretive social–psychological understanding as reflected in storysummaries and character descriptions. Based on previous findings that females are more

interpersonally oriented (Gilligan, 1982; Harter, 2006; Nicolopolou, 1996), more

interpretive and self-referential in their language style (Cooper & Anderson-Inman, 1988;

Rubin & Greene, 1992) and better at decoding emotions (Eisenberg et al., 1996),



we tentatively hypothesized that females may be more interpretive than males in

describing and understanding story characters and events. Although the multiple choice

results provided some support for this hypothesis, it was not borne out by the results

from the other two interpretive measures. The reason for this contradictory pattern of

results is unclear. Given this pattern and the lack of previous research specifically aimed

at understanding gender differences in narrative development, the present findingsshould clearly be considered exploratory in nature and be interpreted with caution.

The findings do suggest, however, that further, more refined work on conceptualizing

and investigating possible gender differences in the development of narrative thought

may well be worth pursuing. The developmental work of researchers such as Harter

(1999, 2006) on differential gendered social encounters and experience may provide a

fruitful source for more refined hypotheses for testing in future research, such as that

adolescent femalesmay bemore likely to notice contradictions in a story character’s traits

and roles and be more likely to understand and empathize with the intra-psychic conflictthat can result from grappling with such contradictions.

Applications and implicationsThe findings of the present study have a number of potential practical applications

related to education and assessment. The profiles provided of typical narrativecapabilities of pre-adolescents and adolescents could serve as instructional and

curriculum guides as to what can and cannot be expected of students at different age

levels. For example, the present results indicate that it is unreasonable to expect

typical 10-year-olds to be able to comprehend in any integrated manner a story

involving multiple storylines or multiple layers of meaning, or to expect 12-year-olds

to pick up on implicit narrative themes related to the importance of social roles and

‘one’s place’ in life. The developmental profiles and narrative measures described

herein could also be used to help assess a student’s developmental level in terms ofnarrative understanding. As well, the map of narrative development outlined herein

could serve as the basis for an instructional programme aimed at facilitating

movement from one developmental level of functioning up to a higher level (for

examples with younger children, see Case & McKeough, 1990; McKeough, Davis,

Forgeron, Marini, & Fung, 2005).

What about broader theoretical implications of the present findings? Perhaps, the

most significant general implication of this study relates to the role of narrative

thought and its development in the fundamental human endeavour of meaning-making (Bruner, 1986, 1990). Both narrative structure and narrative content

transform dramatically during late childhood and adolescence, and both can be seen

as contributing significantly to transformations in meaning-making capability. Growth

in the structural complexity of narrative thought enables adolescents to construct

and interpret narratives not only with just one basic story and essential meaning,

but also those containing hierarchically embedded sub stories and multiple layers of

meaning. Development in social–psychological understanding provides adolescents

with a new repertoire of meaning-making constructs, including enduring states,personality traits, personal histories and broader socio-historical–cultural contexts.

Together, the enhanced structural capacity and enhanced set of meaning-making

tools allow adolescents to construct a new interpretive meta-cognitive platform from

which the flow of human events, actions and experiences can be viewed and

fathomed.



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Received 12 January 2006; revised version received 22 November 2006



Appendix A

Multiple choice questionsThe five questions are listed verbatim below, with the ‘best’ answer italicized for each

question.

(1) Which of the following best describes the overall moral of the story, taking into

account both the story about the boy and the story about the man?

a. You can’t trust adults, even when they make promises to you.

b. Trying to act younger or older than you are doesn’t work very well.

c. You should never talk to strangers.d. Trying to act young when you are old doesn’t work very well.

(2) Stories often have symbols in them. A symbol is something that stands for

something else. For example, a heart or a rose is often used as a symbol of love. In this

story, the fountain is a symbol. What do you think the fountain stands for in this story?

a. The beauty of water and sun.

b. The happiness of old age.

c. The dangers of travelling.d. The liveliness and energy of youth.

(3) Authors often use foreshadowing in their stories. Foreshadowing is where

something happens or is described in the story that gives us a hint about what is going to

happen later. If you think about it, the word itself tells you what foreshadowing means –

fore like before, and shadow like a shadow hints or tells us the outline of a person or

thing. Foreshadowing is like a hint of what is to come. In this story, the unhappy events

at the end of the story are foreshadowed by one of the following lines. Which one do youthink it is?

a. Heavy clouds drifted towards the spring sun.

b. ‘I’m not hungry.’

c. The child stared at him but said nothing.

d. The car arrived shortly afterwards.

(4) Which of the following is the most important way in which the boy and the man in

this story are similar to one another?a. They both would like to be Indian warriors hunting buffalo on the prairie.

b. The man once was a schoolboy, just like the boy.

c. They both would like to be something other than what they actually are.

d. They both like the fountain.

(5) Which of the following do you think is the best explanation for why the old man

never went back to the fountain?

a. He wanted a change in his life, so he moved away to another town.b. He was afraid the boy would be there again and would still be mad at him.

c. He just got too old to walk any more.

d. He finally gave up thinking that he could be young again.


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