Narrative Structure and Mental State Talk in children's Writing: A Comparison between Fictional, Personal and Hypothetical Stories.

The reported study analyzed narrative and mental state talk abilities in a sample of 150 children between the third and fifth grade, using three types of stories (fictional, personal and hypothetical). The results showed a clear differentiation, both in terms of narrative length and completeness, with scores of personal stories being significantly lower than those of fictional and hypothetical ones. Furthermore, each task was characterized by the use of specific narrative categories (Planning, Description and Action were prevalent in fictional, personal and hypothetical stories, respectively), as well as specific mental references (Volitional, Emotional and Perceptual terms occurred more often in fictional, personal and hypothetical narratives, respectively). More generally, the results confirm the suggestion that personal and fictional narratives follow different developmental paths (Allen et al., 1994). Indeed, personal stories were shorter and more focused on the description of the main episodes and their emotional consequences, while in fictional narratives children were more concentrated on reporting the motives and intentional plans of the actors. Regarding the hypothetical story, it resembled the fictional task in many respects (including completeness measures); however, there were differences in the use of the Action category, probably because the specific story stem employed in our study induced the children to focus on the characters’ reactions to the contextual events.