Department of Psychology, San Diego State University San Diego, CA, USA.
Front Psychol. 2014 May 20;5:469. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00469. eCollection 2014.
Oral narrative production develops dramatically from 3 to 5 years of age, and is a key factor in a child's ability to communicate about the world. Concomitant with this are developments in executive function (EF). For example, executive attention and behavioral inhibition show marked development beginning around 4 years of age. Both EF and oral narrative abilities have important implications for academic success, but the relationship between them is not well understood. The present paper utilizes a cross-lagged design to assess convergent and predictive relations between EF and narrative ability. As a collateral measure, we collected a Language Sample during 10 min of free play. Language Sample did not share significant variance with Narrative Production, thus general language growth from Wave 1 to Wave 2 cannot account for the predictive relations between EF and Narrative. Our findings suggest that although EF and Narrative ability appear independent at each Wave, they nevertheless support each other over developmental time. Specifically, the ability to maintain focus at 4 years supports subsequent narrative ability and narrative ability at 4 years supports subsequent facility and speed in learning and implementing new rules.
口语叙事能力从 3 到 5 岁之间显著发展，是儿童对世界进行交流的关键能力。与之同时发展的还有执行功能 (EF)。例如，执行注意力和行为抑制从大约 4 岁开始表现出明显的发展。EF 和口语叙事能力对学业成功都有重要影响，但它们之间的关系尚未得到很好的理解。本文采用交叉滞后设计来评估 EF 和叙事能力之间的会聚和预测关系。作为附带措施，我们在 10 分钟的自由游戏期间收集了语言样本。语言样本与叙事生成没有显著差异，因此从第 1 波到第 2 波的一般语言增长不能解释 EF 和叙事之间的预测关系。我们的研究结果表明，尽管 EF 和叙事能力在每个波次看起来是独立的，但它们在发展过程中相互支持。具体来说，4 岁时保持专注的能力支持随后的叙事能力，而 4 岁时的叙事能力支持随后学习和实施新规则的能力和速度。
