Correlates of narrative competency at primary school age: what pre-requisites should be developed at preschool ?
This study investigates the relationship between narratives and independent measures of language and non verbal abilities. Thirty-six French speaking children aged between 7 and 9 years old were administered tasks measuring executive functions, linguistic abilities and the macro- and micro- levels of narratives. Correlation and regression analysis demonstrated that executive functions and deictic expressions are related to story grammar. Executive functions were also found to be related to the number of complex utterances included in narrative production. None of the linguistic measures were found to be significantly related to narrative production. The role of non-verbal cognitive abilities, such as executive functions in complex language production such as narratives, is discussed.