Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- I PERSPECTIVES
- II DEVELOPING REPRESENTATIONAL SYSTEMS
- 4 Early Cognition: Episodic to Mimetic Childhood in a Hybrid Culture
- 5 The Emergence of Mediating Language
- 6 Memory in Early Childhood: The Emergence of the Historical Self
- 7 The Emergence of the Storied Mind
- III DEVELOPING CONCEPTUAL SYSTEMS
- IV CONCLUSIONS
- Notes
- References
- Name Index
- Subject Index
7 - The Emergence of the Storied Mind
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- I PERSPECTIVES
- II DEVELOPING REPRESENTATIONAL SYSTEMS
- 4 Early Cognition: Episodic to Mimetic Childhood in a Hybrid Culture
- 5 The Emergence of Mediating Language
- 6 Memory in Early Childhood: The Emergence of the Historical Self
- 7 The Emergence of the Storied Mind
- III DEVELOPING CONCEPTUAL SYSTEMS
- IV CONCLUSIONS
- Notes
- References
- Name Index
- Subject Index
Summary
Socially constructed narratives as organizers of children's nascent autobiographical memory were a central focus of the previous chapter. According to the account sketched there, narrative constructions develop in collaboration with adults and serve to structure the child's memory for personally meaningful experience. Such a theory encompasses two major functions of narrative: narrative as a discourse genre, organizing conversational interchanges; and narrative as a form of thinking. As noted previously, both Bruner (1986) and Donald (1991) claim that narrative serves a broader, social and cultural function of myth-making, establishing shared narratives that convey culturally significant messages. In a similar vein, Miller (1994) and her colleagues have suggested that narrative is a socializing form, conveying through narratives of personal experience the ways of being and behaving within a particular socialcultural group.
These varying functions of narrative in human society and in children's lives, and the claims surrounding them, raise important issues of relevance to cognitive development. If, as Bruner (1986) proposes, narrative is a universal mode of human language, is it a universal mode of thought, as Donald's theory as well as Bruner's proposes? Is it then also an innately determined mode of thought? Or does it develop in response to cultural models, as suggested in Chapter 6? If the latter, what is the course of development, and what role does narrative play at different developmental points in the child's construction of mental models? These questions, related to how narrative is acquired, developed, and used, are themes of this chapter.
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- Language in Cognitive DevelopmentThe Emergence of the Mediated Mind, pp. 183 - 220Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996
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