Young Low-Income Children’s Development and Textualization of Event’s Representations

PLANA, M.D.

Buenos Aires

Workshop; Workshop with Judith Hudson “Talking About Time: The Development of Memory”; 2010

CIIPME-CONICET

This project aims to explore the construction and organization of mental event representation (general and specific events and fictional stories), and the use of linguistic forms to produce them in low income children of 3, 4 and 5 years. The interest of this project is that most of the studies on cognitive and linguistic development have addressed these processes in middle income children (Nelson, 1996; they go give Broek, 1997; Trabasso & Stein, 1997). Participants: 210 children aged 3, 4 and 5 years of suburban populations Buenos Aires: 140 children from low-income families and 70 middle-income families took part in the study. Method: 12 tests were developed to elicit different types of routine’s narratives, past experiences and fictional stories (total of narratives: 2.310). Two different conditions were handled: 1) the context of elicitation: linguistic or non-linguistic. 2) the topic of the stimulus: related or not to a familiar script of the child´s daily life.