The relationship between narrative microstructure and macrostructure: Differences between six- and eight-year-olds

Abstract The current study aimed to investigate age-related differences in narrative abilities at the macrostructural and microstructural levels examine which aspects explain macrostructure ages six eight. Oral narratives were elicited from 89 Croatian monolingual children using Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN). At level, measure of lexical diversity D, clausal density, mean length clause assessed. Macrostructure was assessed standardized MAIN scoring procedure. We found between two age groups diversity, macrostructure, with eight-year-olds higher on all measures. Variance explained a significant extent by case six-year-olds, both density eight-year-olds. Our results suggest that six-year-olds rely mostly when telling story, while also draw syntactic abilities.