Storytelling in Chippewa-Cree children

The structure and content of self-generated narratives were compared for 20 traditional and 20 nontraditional Chippewa-Cree children in four age groups (5, 7, 9, and 11 years). A majority of the stories contained temporally and causally related events and goal-based action. MLT-unit of the narratives was longer and highly structured stories were constructed more frequently with increasing age. The two traditionality groups differed developmentally in their use of obstacles and causally connected episodes. The stories of 11-year-old traditional children were significantly more likely to contain these elements than their 5-year-old counterparts, whereas similar comparisons for nontraditional children revealed no such developmental change. In terms of story content, intrapersonal obstacles were found to be employed by the oldest groups only and were used more frequently by these Chippewa-Cree children than had been previously reported (e.g., Stein, 1988). Several later-developing aspects of story content were identified that seemed to reflect a Cree cultural influence. These results provide evidence for the use of episodic structure by Chippewa-Cree children, but suggest that the developmental course for particular story structure and content can vary as a function of culture.