2026-10-08T10:58:25Z https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai

oai:figshare.com:article/33857551 2026-09-25T15:11:22Z category_29395 category_29020 portal_225 item_type_3 month_year_09_2026

Children’s narrative skills and internal state terms (Gagarina et al., 2026) Natalia Gagarina (24992043) Ute Bohnacker (24992071) Manuel Bohn (11974272) Sharon Armon-Lotem (17966116) Dato Abashidze (15356929) Qurbondin Alamshoev (24992172) Daria Alkhimchenkova (24992175) Carmit Altman (17966119) Amanov Amirkul (24992194) Kathleen Kay Amora (11556034) Stanislava Antonijevic (13152084) Melina Aparici (554928) Reili Argus (24992205) Marta Białecka (24992206) Elma Blom (19500611) Tessel Boerma (16965432) Alondra Camus Torres (24992222) Angel Chan (18291937) Uma Maheshwari Chimirala (24992351) Vicky Chondrogianni (24992353) Ineta Dabašinskienė (24992362) Elena De Gaudio (24992368) Sveta Fichman (17966118) Elena Galkina (24992379) Rowena Garcia (22383977) Angelika Golegos (14349633) Ewa Haman (7164212) Gordana Hrzica (24992395) Markus Huff (3517949) Kateryna Iefremenko (12065537) Monika Janikova (16021655) Kristine Marie Jensen de López (10190449) Svetlana Kapalková (5277986) Sviatlana Karpava (24992434) Daleen Klop (7378256) Mariam Komeili (24545111) Sari Kunnari (23003921) Andra Kütt-Leedis (24993048) Chiara Levorato (24993053) Josefin Lindgren (24993063) Madhavi Maganti (24993071) Jonas Maigaard (24993075) Theodoros Marinis (562927) Elisa Mattiauda (13929720) Karolina Muszyńska (23702777) Gloria Nyarko (24993088) Mary-Pat O’Malley Keighran (24177541) Celestino Oriikiriza (24993115) Agnieszka Otwinowska-Kasztelanic (9164666) Eleni Peristeri (12033714) Alexandra Perovic (13929723) Madhavi Gayathri Raman (24993135) Maja Roch (10431938) Irina Sekerina (24993155) Annelien Smith (24993170) Alyona Sternharz (24993189) He Sun (446247) Ali Talebi (7164203) Nathalie Topaj (24993227) Freideriki Tselekidou (8859284) Ianthi-Maria Tsimpli (24993232) Sigal Uziel (19792718) Taina Välimaa (24993240) Wenchun Yang (22509101) Dongsun Yim (23657676) Joel Walters (24643948) Child language acquisition Interactive narrative children oral narrative skills internal state terms fictional stories Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives cross-linguistic data set picture-based stories story characters age monolingualism bilingualism elicitation mode primary school retelling language skills large-scale study global assessment of narratives Purpose: This article investigates the development of oral narrative skills in children through the lens of internal states in a large cross-linguistic data set of comparable fictional stories.Method: In a joint effort of research groups around the world, 5,507 picture-based stories were elicited from 2,763 monolingual and bilingual typically developing (TD) children aged 3–13 years in 32 countries across 44 languages with the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN; Gagarina et al., 2019). These were transcribed and coded for internal state terms (ISTs) that express story characters’ thoughts, emotions, and perceptions. Using generalized mixed models, we investigated the likelihood of a child producing ISTs in the stories, as influenced by age, monolingualism versus bilingualism, and, for bilinguals, first language versus second language, elicitation mode (telling vs. retelling), IST type, story type, and story length.Results: We found strong positive effects of age and elicitation mode (retelling) on IST production, but no differences between monolinguals and bilinguals or for bilinguals in their two languages. Children were far more likely to produce ISTs as initiating events than ISTs as reactions. Story length only predicted IST production in younger children, but not in older ones.Conclusions: As shown by this large-scale sample, children’s skills in making explicit the internal states of characters in fictional stories develop substantially during the primary school years, across languages, and for both monolingual and bilingual learners. The robust facilitative effect of retelling suggests that retelling may be particularly suitable to use with MAIN when researchers/clinicians are interested in assessing a child’s ability to verbalize internal states. Future research should examine ISTs in children with developmental disorders and explore their application in intervention.Supplemental Material S1. The characteristics of the datasets and participants included in the study, including the data origin, languages investigated, total number of children, mean, minimum, and maximum age, number of bilingual participants, demographic information (e.g., socio-economic status, urban/rural location, and region or city), inclusion and exclusion criteria, recruitment strategy and sampling type, as well as the response rate.Supplemental Material S2. Information on Ethic Statement to allow data collection.Gagarina, N., Bohnacker, U., Bohn, M., Armon-Lotem, S., Abashidze, D., Alamshoev, Q., Alkhimchenkova, D., Altman, C., Amirkul, A., Amora, K. K., Antonijevic, S., Aparici, M., Argus, R., Białecka, M., Blom, E., Boerma, T., Torres, A. C., Chan, A., Chimirala, U. M., . . . Walters, J. (2026). Children’s oral narrative skills through the lens of internal state terms: A large-scale study of fictional stories elicited with the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools. Advance online publication. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1044/2026_LSHSS-25-00147" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">https://doi.org/10.1044/2026_LSHSS-25-00147</a> 2026-09-25T15:11:22Z Dataset Dataset 10.23641/asha.33857551.v1 https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Children_s_narrative_skills_and_internal_state_terms_Gagarina_et_al_2026_/33857551 CC BY 4.0