Investigating 5- to 9-Year-Old Children's Descriptions of Routine Tasks
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Date
2023-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
Scripts provide insight into children's organization and perception of events (Reifel & Garza, 1983) and their understanding of relational terms (French, 1983). Previous work found that children are providing scripts at a young age, but five-year-old children still have difficulty sequencing actions (Verrier, 2000). Thus, this study investigates five- to nine-year-old children's descriptions of routine tasks to better understand children's script mastery and script organization. Sixty children and twelve adults looked at pictures of someone brushing their teeth and washing their hands to describe how they would perform these tasks. Adults provided standardized descriptions. Responses were coded for the number and type of steps provided as well as for the temporal terms included. Results found no age-related differences between the child groups, but adults included significantly more steps than the children. Also, contrary to the adults, children showed an interaction between the event type and step categories. Furthermore, participants used the temporal term then most frequently, and opportunities to use then were taken most at the transition points between step categories. Findings suggest that children structure their scripts similarly to adults but still do not include as many details. Also, participants identify distinct transition points within scripts and label them with the temporal term then. These findings are valuable because they may potentially contribute to research surrounding narratives and learning disabilities.
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Keywords
routines, scripts, children, descriptions, language, temporal