A Tale of Age and Abilities: Analyzing Narrative Macrostructure Development in Chinese Preschoolers Through the Lens of Story Grammar

The aim of this research was to explore the progression of narrative macro-structure in Chinese children between the ages of 3 and 6 in preschool. To investigate the narratives of young children in a Chinese prefecture-level city kindergarten, the study selected the wordless picture book “Frog, Where Are You?” as their material. They employed the story grammar analysis method and examined the storytelling of 41 preschoolers (aged 3–4), 47 preschoolers (aged 4–5), and 66 preschoolers (aged 5–6). Significant disparities were observed among age groups in terms of both the total score for story grammar ability and the specific indicators associated with story grammar ability scores, as highlighted by the study. Notably, substantial variances were observed in the total story grammar ability score between children aged 3–4 and 4–5, between children aged 4–5 and 5–6, and between children aged 3–4 and 5–6, as evidenced by p-values of 0.000. Furthermore, substantial dissimilarities were evident in the specific indicators of story grammar ability scores, encompassing “story background, story cause, attempt, and story results,“ when comparing children aged 3–4 years with those aged 4–5 years (p-values of 0.001, 0.000, 0.025, and 0.008, correspondingly). Moreover, significant differences were identified between children aged 4–5 years and children aged 5–6 years (all p-values of 0.000). However, there were no significant differences in the “internal response” indicator between different age groups (p-value of 0.777 > 0.05). The study found that Chinese preschoolers’ narrative macrostructure development showed extremely strong age effects, and their narrative macrostructure ability increased with age. Furthermore, the study identified that the development of narrative macrostructure in Chinese preschoolers may be related to their own cause-and-effect logical reasoning abilities.