Linking Narrative Macrostructure to Later Reading Comprehension in Greek-German Bilingual Children

09:00 - 10:30

Room: C-Building - N14

Chair/s:

Gabriella Daroczy, Freideriki Tselekidou

Narrative is not just a way to package information; it is cognitive infrastructure with its specific architecture. This symposium, spanning five perspectives, shows how narrative architecture shapes thinking across contexts.

The first talk investigates how narrative competence supports mathematics, especially word problems. An online adult study linked narrative skills to performance (reaction time and accuracy) across problem types, including carry/borrow operations and tasks that varied number relevance. This points to cross-domain links between narrative skill and math problem-solving.
The second talk shows how early oral narrative macrostructure predicts later reading comprehension, with strong evidence in Greek–German bilingual learners. The results align with models like the Simple View of Reading and stress the value of early narrative abilities for later literacy.
The third talk explores how coherence relations connect parts of a text and guide meaning making. Interpretations of the same relation can shift with language and cultural perspective. Using an annotation-based approach across originals and translations, the work maps these differences and explores computational models to capture them.
The fourth talk shows how literary reading may be shaped not only by text-internal features (language use, themes) but also by extrinsic cues, i.e. paratextual information such as signals of a work’s canonical status. An online study shows how paratextual cues about a novel excerpt’s literary quality (Booker Prize nomination vs. none displayed on the cover) influence story perception, reading experience, and text processing.
The fifth talk examines the effect of narrative structure on revising mental models after corrections (debunking effect) versus sticking to misinformation (continued influence effect). Study 1 varied psychological distance (Germany vs. another continent) and emotional valence (positive vs. negative); Study 2 varied correction design, testing whether including and ordering explanations (why the misinformation is false) impacts debunking.

To sum up, across these studies, narrative appears as a basic mental tool across domains that selects what matters, links ideas, and guides belief updating. From math to bilingual literacy, from cross-linguistic interpretation to paratext effects and misinformation correction, the common message is clear: shaping narrative structures and cues can meaningfully steer learning, comprehension, and reasoning.

Submission 612

Linking Narrative Macrostructure to Later Reading Comprehension in Greek-German Bilingual Children

SymposiumTalk-02

Presented by: Freideriki Tselekidou

Freideriki Tselekidou ^{1, 2}, Natalia Gagarina ¹

¹ Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS), Berlin, Germany

² Humboldt-University, Berlin, Germany

Background: Narrative skills are foundational for later literacy because they bridge oral and written language and involve higher-level abilities such as organizing story structure, establishing causal links, and making inferences. However, evidence on how oral narratives contribute to reading comprehension remains limited, particularly for bilingual children in non-English language contexts.

Purpose: This longitudinal study examined whether narrative production and comprehension in Grade 1 predict reading comprehension in Grade 2 in second language (L2) German bilinguals. We further asked whether these associations remain after controlling for vocabulary and reading fluency.

Methods: Sixty Greek-German bilinguals were recruited at the end of Grade 1 (Mage = 7;2, SD = 0;5) and followed until Grade 2 (Mage = 8;2, SD = 0;4). In Grade 1, children produced picture-based narratives and completed narrative comprehension tasks using the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN; Gagarina et al., 2012/2019). Macrostructure scores were derived for production and comprehension based on the MAIN protocol. Expressive vocabulary was also assessed. In Grade 2, children completed standardized measures of reading fluency and reading comprehension.

Results: Narrative macrostructure in comprehension predicted reading comprehension over and above vocabulary and reading fluency. No significant associations emerged between narrative macrostructure production and reading comprehension.

Discussion: Findings highlight the role of early narrative as a unique predictor of later reading comprehension in bilinguals with L2 German, even when accounting for vocabulary and reading fluency. These results underscore the value of narrative-based assessments in early education, with narrative skills serving as early markers of later reading comprehension.

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