Early narrative skills in Chilean preschool: Questions scaffold the production of coherent narratives

• We compared responses to questions about a narrative with narrative productions.
• Exposure to questions before production resulted in more coherent narratives.
• Narrative production prior to questions did not result in better question answers.
• Questions acted as a scaffold to support more sophisticated narrative skills.
• Questions may focused children's attention on key story elements.

This study examined whether or not question answering aided the construction of coherent narratives in pre-readers. Sixty Chilean preschoolers completed two tasks using a wordless picture-book: 30 children answered questions about the story and then produced a narrative using the book; 30 children completed the tasks in reverse order. Elements of coherence were assessed in both tasks, namely problem, resolution, and mental-states. The findings indicate that questions can scaffold the production of more coherent narratives. Narratives elicited after questions were judged to be more coherent than those produced before the question–answering task. In contrast, there were no differences between scores for the question answers in the different order conditions. The results are discussed regarding the interactional role of questions and the facilitative effect they have on focusing attention to the narrative task.