Children's Cognitive Representations of Discourse

Abstract

This study examined the role of vocal cues in children's cognitive representations of texts. Specifically, vocal cues were expected to affect children's selection of a representation and the speed with which such mental images were drawn. A total of 80 children from two grade levels (first vs. third) listened to stories told with vocal expressions that either strongly or weakly cued the emotional states of the story characters. The children's comprehension of the narratives was assessed through free recall, cued recall, and recognition tasks. In general, vocal cues influenced the speed and likelihood of constructing inferences. Contrary to prediction, the cues failed to enhance memory for explicit text concepts. The findings are discussed in terms of developing a model specifying the relationship between vocal cues and text understanding.