本篇論文的目的在於探討母親在親子對話中談論過去事件的方式對於小孩自行敘說過去事件能力的影響。研究語料來自於兩名以漢語為母語的三歲小孩與她們母親的對話，以及這兩名小孩與研究者之間的對話。研究結果顯示，根據Reese, Haden, & Fivush (1993)的研究，這兩位母親都展現出高度詳述的風格(high-elaborative style)，不過這兩位媽媽所注重的敘說內容(narrative information)是不同的，其中一位媽媽注重事件的過程(complicating action)，另一位媽媽則注重事件發生的背景(orientation)。至於小孩自行敘說過去事件的能力，研究結果發現這兩位小孩會受到她們母親的影響，亦即這兩位小孩在與研究者對話時，常常詳述(elaborate)正在討論的過去事件，較少重複(repeat)已提過的資訊，不過有關於敘說的內容(narrative information)，這兩位小孩到了後期所注重的內容並不相同，她們所強調的內容會與她們母親類似，而這個結果與維高斯基(Vygotsky)的理論是一致的。

This study investigates mothers’ ways of co-constructing narratives about the past in mother-child conversations when the children were 3;6 and the children’s narrative performance in researcher-child conversations at three time points when the children were 3;6, 3;9, and 4;0. The effect of mothers’ ways of co-constructing narratives with children on children’s narrative performance was also investigated. Mothers’ ways of co-constructing narratives with children were examined in terms of the conversational styles and the narrative information types, and children’s narrative performance was examined in terms of the conversational contributions and the narrative information types. Subjects in this study are two female children (D and Z) and their mothers. The results show that the two mothers displayed the same conversational style, namely, high-elaborative style termed by Reese, Haden, & Fivush (1993). But, they differed in the type of narrative information that they placed more emphasis on. One of the mothers was particularly concerned about orientation information, while the other mother placed more emphasis on complicating actions.
As for children’s narrative performance, the two children were very similar about the type of utterances that they contributed in the narratives when having conversations with the researcher. More specifically, they both frequently produced the type of elaborations, which was much higher than repetitions at each time point. In terms of narrative information types, at Time 1 (3;6) and Time 2 (3;9), D and Z were similar in that complicating action was higher than orientation. However, at Time 3 (4;0), Z’s orientation was higher than complicating action, while D’s complicating action was still higher than orientation. With respect to the effect of mothers’ ways of co-constructing narratives with children on children’s narrative performance, it was found that the difference that D’s mother provided or requested for complicating actions much more often than Z’s mother did at Time 1 (3;6) was reflected in the two children’s percentage of this narrative information type at Time 3 (4;0). This is in line with Vygotskian theory that early scaffolds provided by mothers would be reflected in children’s performance at a later time.

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