This study examined the recall of televised stories for younger (4-6 years) and older (7-9 years) children with and without ADHD under two different viewing conditions (toys present/toys absent). Each child watched two Rugrats television programs, once with toys present and once with toys absent. Immediately after viewing a program, the child completed a free recall of the observed story. Nonreferred childrens recall increased more than ADHD childrens as importance level increased, and older nonreferred children recalled more information overall than older children with ADHD. For the toys condition, children with ADHD had smaller correlations between the story units recalled and the order of these units in the story than did nonreferred children. Children with ADHD demonstrated multiple difficulties in story comprehension. They were less sensitive to thematic importance and they produced less coherent recalls than their nonreferred peers.

Children with ADHD perform more poorly in school than comparison children. Although many factors may play a role in this academic deficit, story comprehension deficits have been identified that reveal difficulties with higher cognitive processes. This study investigated how effectively children with ADHD formulate story representations when given little or no story structure. The production of goal-based stories was the major focus. Children with ADHD and comparison children created a story when no story structure was provided (free story) and when some story structure was provided (4-picture story). The stories were measured for coherence, use of goal-attempt-outcome (GAO) sequences and goal-based story grammar categories. Children with ADHD had difficulty structuring a story and utilizing a goal plan in both story tasks. The provision of story structure reduced some group differences. These results supplement evidence of problems among children with ADHD in using goal plans to formulate story representations.

Academic difficulties are well-documented among children with ADHD. Exploring these difficulties through story comprehension research has revealed deficits among children with ADHD in making causal connections between events, and using causal structure and thematic importance when recalling stories. Important to theories of story comprehension and implied in these deficits is the ability to make inferences. Often, characters’ goals are implicit and explanations of events must be inferred. The purpose of the present study was to compare the ability of 7- to 11-year-old children with ADHD and their comparison peers to make inferences during story comprehension. Children watched two televised stories, each paused at five points. In the experimental condition, at each pause children told what they were thinking about the story, whereas in the control condition no responses were made during pauses. After viewing, children recalled the story. Several types of inferences and accuracy of inferences were coded. Children with ADHD generated fewer of the most essential inferences, accurate coherence inferences, than did comparison children, both during story processing and during story recall. The groups did not differ on production of other types of inferences. Generating fewer coherence inferences has important implications for story comprehension deficits in children with ADHD.

La présente thèse examine la capacité des enfants âgés de huit à dix ans à produire des inférences sur l’état émotionnel du protagoniste au moment même où ils découvrent l’histoire (i.e., évaluation en temps réel). Quatre objectifs sont visés. Premièrement, la question de la spécificité des inférences émotionnelles produites est posée et appréhendée à partir de deux types de tâches déjà utilisées et validées chez l’adulte, à savoir une tâche de complètement et une tâche de choix multiples. Pour la tâche de complètement, les enfants sont invités à désigner par écrit l’émotion que pourrait ressentir le personnage à ce moment précis de l’histoire alors que pour la tâche de choix multiples ils doivent sélectionner parmi une liste d’émotions celle qui correspond le mieux à la situation décrite. Deuxièmement, outre les apports méthodologiques retirés de la comparaison de ces deux tâches, cette thèse interroge le développement des connaissances émotionnelles en explorant tant leur maîtrise des émotions de base que des émotions sociales. Troisièmement, s’agissant d’étudier les inférences émotionnelles élaborées en situation d’écoute d’histoires, l’expressivité du narrateur est considérée avec l’idée qu’une prosodie marquée pourrait favoriser l’identification des émotions du personnage. Enfin, dans l’optique d’ouvrir ce travail à une comparaison interculturelle, la capacité des enfants à inférer l’émotion du personnage à partir de textes de littérature jeunesse a été envisagée tant en France qu’à l’Ile Maurice. Au regard de ces différents objectifs, les retombées des études menées sont de deux ordres : méthodologique et théorique. La présente thèse permet ainsi d’alimenter la réflexion tant du point de vue des connaissances scientifiques actuellement disponibles sur ce sujet dans le domaine de la psychologie que du point de vue des pratiques pédagogiques à privilégier dans le domaine de l’éducation. / This thesis examines the ability of children aged eight to ten years to produce inferences about the emotional state of the protagonist while they discover the story (i.e., online evaluation). Four main objectives have to be distinguished. First, the specificity of the emotional inferences children produced is examined through two types of tasks already used and validated in adults, namely a completion task and a multiple-choice task. Regarding the completion task, children are invited to write down the emotion the character is supposed to feel at this moment of the story. For the multiple-choice task, they have to select from a list of emotional labels the one that best fits the situation described. Secondly, this thesis provides a relevant framework to assess the development of children’s emotional knowledge by considering their ability to infer both basic emotions and social emotions. Thirdly, our purpose is to highlight that the expressivity of the narrator can be of help in inferring the character’s emotions. Finally, in order to open this work to an intercultural comparison, children’s ability to infer the emotion of the character has been considered both in France and in Mauritius. In view of these different objectives, the series of studies we carried address both methodological and theoretical issues. Overall, the present thesis provides additional data to the current state of knowledge in psychology about children’s ability to represent the character’s emotional state and underlines related pedagogical contributions to reinforce practices in the field of education.

The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to compare preschool children's comprehension of a story after either enacting the story or participating in an art project, and (b) to qualitatively describe the children's interactions during the more interactive story enactment instruction. Twenty children from two Head Start classrooms were told the stories as a class, and then participated in either an art project (AP) or story enactment (SE) in small groups. The children in each classroom each heard three stories followed by the AP condition, and three followed by the SE condition. The children's comprehension of the story was tested after the story was initially read, and again after the AP or SE by having the children participate in a joint retelling of the story in which the child was asked to fill in several pieces of information as the examiner told the story. Children's comprehension of the story was significantly better after receiving story enactment instruction than after art project instruction, although significant variability was present. Children's interactions during the story enactment were evaluated using a rubric. Children's participation varied from story to story. Smaller group sizes and repeated enactments were beneficial to most children's participation in the story.

本研究之目的在探討親子共讀對幼兒閱讀能力之影響。使用自編之家長與幼兒共同閱讀問卷，收集有關親子共讀、家長及幼兒背景資料；本研究之幼兒閱讀能力，指幼兒認字能力、故事理解力、聲韻覺識能力，認字與故事理解力方面採用楊怡婷（1995）改編之故事及自編之理解能力測驗，聲韻覺識能力則採用呂珮菁（2004）聲韻覺識測驗，幼兒閱讀能力之資料皆至園所對幼兒施測而得。首先，分析背景資料對幼兒閱讀能力之影響，再比較有無親子共讀家庭中，分別在幼兒在閱讀能力上造成之差異；最後，針對前述有差異的閱讀能力，深入探討具有親子共讀的家庭裡，共讀的互動方式與閱讀能力間的關係。 研究結果為: 性別對幼兒的閱讀能力並沒有影響。亦發現學英語的幼兒在聲韻覺識作業細項中的中文聲母刪除作業及英文音素刪除作業表現較佳。在家長教育程度與職業在幼兒閱讀能力上沒有顯著差異。關於有無親子共讀對幼兒閱讀能力之影響，結果為：具有親子共讀的幼兒在故事理解力表現較無親子共讀者顯著為佳。 針對故事理解能力，家長共讀與此能力間的相關行為有：對於故事內容進行描述教導與推論教導，其中，描述教導的具體行為有「給予描述或指名」、「要求孩子描述或指名」、「要求孩子預測劇情」、「戲劇化表達」；推論教導的具體行為有「常問為什麼」、「與孩子討論因果關係」，這些都可以增進幼兒對故事的瞭解以及作出高層次認知的思考，基於研究結果之建議，文中有詳細討論。 / This thesis investigates the influence of parent to the literacy of their young child through sharing books with their child. Parents were requested to fill out the questionnaires about joint book reading and children were assessed their literacy which includes word recognition, story comprehension, and phonological awareness. The sample (n= 53) included 40 patents who have joint book reading and 13 parents who do not. The first step of this thesis is to compare with children literacy between children whose parents have joint book reading and children whose parents do not. Children with sharing book by parents only have better achievement in story comprehension than those who without joint book reading. Thus, the second step of this thesis is to find out what kind of parents’ utterances during joint book reading is related to the story comprehension of children and these utterances may improve the story comprehension of children. The utterances which are related to the story comprehension of children are following: 1. Labels: Parents request or provide character identification, labeling of objects, and so on. 2. Descriptions: Parents request or provide an explanation of plot information and focus on what has happened or is happening. Inference: Parents request predictions about why has happened in the story and discuss the causality in the story with their children.

The value of this research hinges on the idea that exchanging illustrations for descriptive text can provide appropriate schemas for students with reading difficulties and thereby improve their comprehension and vocabulary acquisition. The research in this dissertation is based on theories and earlier research in the fields of psychology, education, reading, and narratology. A review of these fields offers a variety of perspectives on the processes involved in reading and comprehension. These processes range from the physical systems involved in reading (e.g., early childhood development, eye movement) to the psychological systems, which include cognitive load theory as well as image and text processing models. This study compares two reading methods by analyzing students' vocabulary and comprehension gains. Both groups read the same text and completed the same pre- and post-tests. The control group read the text from the book which was text only. The experimental group read from a modified text on the computer screen. The text was modified by replacing some sentences with images designed to transmit the same information (e.g., descriptions of the setting, vocabulary items) in a graphic format. The images were in-line with the text, and designed to be read as part of the story, not as additional illustrations. Final analysis shows that the experimental format performed as well as the control format for most students. However, students who have learning disabilities, particularly language learners who have learning disabilities, did not make gains in the text only control format. These same students did show statistically significant gains with the experimental format, particularly the section of reading where the vocabulary words were explicitly presented in the images. Disparate, non-homogenous groupings of students reflect the actual teaching and learning circumstances in the school, as required by the school system. This situation thus represents the actual status quo situation faced by teachers in our school. We leave it to future researchers to work with more homogenous groups of students in order to attain clearer, stronger and more plaintively useful results.

The thesis deals with the possibilities of developing emergent literacy, especially story comprehension, with preschool children using selected methods of critical thinking. The theoretical part is devoted to the ways of developing passion for reading and reading literacy in preschool education, it pursues the possibilities of using some of the methods of the RWCT programme (Reading and Writing for Critical Thinking) in working with books in the educational process of the kindergarten. It further describes the development of chidren of preschool age and reading strategies that can already be cultivated at this age. The practical part describes the project Working with Jiří Stránský's book Tales for little Clara that is based on didactic application of its texts intended for preschoolers. The project makes use of selected methods of the RWCT programme. Research using the method of structured interview finds out how methods of critical thinking can influence story comprehension among five-year-old children. It evaluates and interprets the findings from the beginning and the end of the project implementation, compares the determined levels of story comprehension in a group of girls and in a group of boys. The outcomes of the research show a considerable improvement of comprehension following the...