Narrative Competence in Pretense Play and Stories

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to explore a method for analyzing children's narratives in pretense play and replica stories. A theoretical framework was derived from Bruner (1990) and Fein (1989). This framework served to construct the Realistic-Imaginal Scale (RIS) which incorporated behavioral components appearing in the relevant empirical literature. The scale includes 17 items grouped into 4 categories and measures narratives on a realistic-imaginary continuum. A limited attempt to test the applicability of the RIS, using pretense play episodes of Israeli kindergarten children, and the replica stories of US preschoolers, revealed well-distributed scores correlated with Applebee's narrative organization scores. The scale yielded high inter-scorer reliability. Distributions of scores showed a striking resemblance between the two culturally and contextually different samples. The strong theoretical framework of the RIS makes it a promising tool for the analysis of young children's narrative competence, thus providing a potent tool for theoretical and research.