Narrative development in norwegian preschoolers: the role of demography, language and socio-emotional skills

Abstract The current study examined how language and socio-emotional skills, demographic factors and being a second language learner relate to children’s narrative production. Participants were 270 linguistically diverse Norwegian preschoolers aged 3–5 years. Language and socio-emotional skills were assessed at the start of the current study, whereas narrative production was assessed twice, at the start of the study and one year later using the standardized picture-book-based Renfrew Bus Story test and the researcher-developed Whale Story test (presented as an animated video without narration). Parents provided information on demography, including educational level, household income, and home literacy environment. Using latent variable path analysis, we found that for the Renfrew Bus Story, which primarily assesses action-oriented features of the storyline, vocabulary and syntactic comprehension exerted a unique effect on narrative production one year later. Additionally, being assessed in the second language was associated with lower narrative production scores, while the home literacy environment positively predicted narrative production, with language and socio-emotional skills mediating these associations. In contrast, for the Whale Story, which requires a more explicit depiction of internal states embedded within the narrative, vocabulary, syntactic comprehension, demographic factors and being a second language learner were less predictive, while socio-emotional skills uniquely contributed to later narrative production. These results underscore the complex interplay of factors shaping narrative production in preschool-aged children, revealing that language and socio-emotional skills, demographic factors and being a being a second language learner contribute distinctly to narrative development, with their roles varying based on the assessment instrument employed.