Internal state terms as the animation glue in narrative plot: investigation of dyslexics and typically-developing children

Abstract

Development of narrative competence, i.e. transition from personal to fiction stories, bridges the gap between child’s mimetic mind and mediational mind (Nelson 1996) and serves as a primary background for early literacy prerequisites (McCabe 1996). Internal state terms (ISTs), an integral part of narrative macrostructure, take part in mentalisation of human behavior and development of literate style that forms a crucial aspect of school-based discourse (Pearson 2002; Curenton & Justice 2004). This is extremely important for diagnosis and treatment of literacy impairments; however, ISTs in atypical populations still lack comprehensive studies. The present study focuses on differences between dyslexic (DY) and typicallydeveloping (TD) children with respect to production of ISTs in story-telling and retelling. The subjects of the experiment were 12 Russian-speaking monolingual DY children (mean age 9 years 9 months); the control group consisted of 12 Russianspeaking monolingual TD peers. The subjects performed two tasks, i.e. story-telling and retelling according picture sequences. The order of tasks was counterbalanced with regard to story complexity and narrative mode. First, storytelling according the more complex sequence in 1st session revealed a gap between the groups: the DYs tended to use less (P<0.08) ISTs than the TDs. Second, Anova analysis highlighted significant effect of story complexity, narrative mode, and order of tasks on the ISTs production in the DY group; among these factors, the order of tasks seems to have the strongest influence. The results of the study call for discussion on significant limitations in the DY children’s mentalisation of narrative protagonists’ behavior.