The purpose of this study was to examine the role played by information on the character's goals in comprehension and production of a picture story. Sixty 4-year-old, 5-year-old and 6-year-old children were divided into two homogeneous groups(10 subjects each)at each age level, and assigned to one of two conditions: the goal condition with given instruction on the character's goals, and the control condition without information about the goals. The children were shown the story consisting of 24 pictures without text. They were asked to describe each picture and, after seeing all the pictures, to recall the story without pictures, to answer fifteen questions about the contents of the story, and then, to reconstruct the narrative sequences. The results showed that the children in the goal condition, even 4-year-olds, could interpret the pictures as a story, while the children in the control condition often failed to integrate the pictures in terms of a story context. In the recall and comprehension tasks, these trends were emphasized, i.e., those parts of the descriptions that were best integrate into a story were recalled and comprehended best, while nonintegrated descriptions tended to be forgotten. It was shown that the goal instruction enhanced especially the performance of younger children. It is suggested that production and comprehension for coherent narrative sequences involve the retention of the goal structure or theme in an integrated unified representation of the meaning. Further, the underlying processes of integration are stable across ages, suggesting that children have some fundamental causal structures from early childhood.

The purpose of this study was to examine the role played by information on the character's goals in comprehension and production of a picture story. Sixty 4-year-old, 5-year-old and 6-year-old children were divided into two homogeneous groups(10 subjects each)at each age level, and assigned to one of two conditions: the goal condition with given instruction on the character's goals, and the control condition without information about the goals. The children were shown the story consisting of 24 pictures without text. They were asked to describe each picture and, after seeing all the pictures, to recall the story without pictures, to answer fifteen questions about the contents of the story, and then, to reconstruct the narrative sequences. The results showed that the children in the goal condition, even 4-year-olds, could interpret the pictures as a story, while the children in the control condition often failed to integrate the pictures in terms of a story context. In the recall and comprehension tasks, these trends were emphasized, i.e., those parts of the descriptions that were best integrate into a story were recalled and comprehended best, while nonintegrated descriptions tended to be forgotten. It was shown that the goal instruction enhanced especially the performance of younger children. It is suggested that production and comprehension for coherent narrative sequences involve the retention of the goal structure or theme in an integrated unified representation of the meaning. Further, the underlying processes of integration are stable across ages, suggesting that children have some fundamental causal structures from early childhood.