Contando cuentosun estudio sobre los efectos de la estructura de los cuentos en la identificación de la idea principal

Resumen

This paper presents a framework for studying the structural recall and abilities to identify the main ideas in a text by three groups of children (mean age: 5;4, 8;2, and 10;3 years). Two separate analyses were performed on the narratives (type of category and type of proposition recalled) according to the story grammar (Thorndyke, 1977). Our results showed that preschool and third grade children were quite capable of generating stories following a prototypical story grammar, but their story schemata were quite poor, as they do not yet identify the main ideas. Around the age of 10 years, there is a clear progression in the elaboration of a story grammar as a conceptual representation of a story and in turn as a form of discourse. Subjects recalled main ideas and told goal�based stories, including internal states and endings evaluating the main character�s actions. Thus, identifying main ideas does not seem to depend on schemata, but to be linked to the use of macrorules