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Narrative performance and parental scaffolding of shy and nonshy children

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2009

KAILEY PEARL REYNOLDS  and
MARY ANN EVANS
KAILEY PEARL REYNOLDS*
Affiliation:
University of Guelph
MARY ANN EVANS
Affiliation:
University of Guelph
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Kailey Pearl Reynolds, Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, CanadaN1G 2W1. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This study examined differences in performance between 20 shy and 20 matched nonshy children on a narrative task and in the way parents scaffolded their narrative performance when reading the wordless book Frog, Where Are You, by Mercer Mayer. Consistent with previous research, results demonstrated that shy children spoke less than their nonshy peers and volunteered less story content. Parents, however, did not differ in how they scaffolded their children's speech turns, nor in the amount of semantic information they provided. Thus, these communicative differences were not accounted for by differential adult scaffolding. Implications for encouraging more verbal behavior from shy children and for the design of wordless storybooks are discussed.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , April 2009 , pp. 363 - 384
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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