Supplementary Material for: Children’s use of evaluative devices in response to the Global TALES protocol

Introduction: It has been well established that the function of sharing personal narratives is to inform the listener about what the event meant to the narrator, for example by using a range of evaluative devices. The use of these evaluative devices may reflect a person’s understanding of the differences between one’s own mind and others, by expressing their beliefs, emotions, thoughts, and desires. This paper investigates children’s use of evaluative devices when producing personal narratives in response to the six emotion-based prompts contained in the Global TALES protocol (excited, worried, annoyed, proud, problem situation, something important). It addresses three research questions: 1) What types and proportions of evaluative devices do 10-year-old English-speaking children use in response to the six prompts contained in the Global TALES protocol and are there differences in performance between boys and girls? 2) What are the correlations between the different types of evaluative devices? 3) Does children’s use of evaluative devices differ depending on the type of prompt used? Methods: Eighty-two native English-speaking ten-year-old children from three English-speaking countries (Australia, New Zealand, and the US) participated. None of the children had been identified with language- and/or learning difficulties. Children’s personal narratives were transcribed and analyzed for the use of 12 evaluative devices: compulsion, internal emotional states, evaluative words, intensifiers, mental states, causal explanations, hypotheses, objective judgements, subjective judgements, intent, negatives, and repetition. Results: Results showed that children use a high number of evaluative devices, with ‘intensifiers’ and ‘evaluative words’ used most frequently. There were few effects for sex, apart from girls using a wider range of evaluative devices than boys. We found moderate to large correlations between most devices, with factor analysis revealing three factors, we labeled as ‘causality’, ‘hypothesis’, and ‘judgement’. Although there were significant overall effects for prompt type on the use of evaluative devices, there was no clear pattern when inspecting responses to individual prompts. Conclusion: The results from this study shed light on children’s use of evaluative devices to convey the meaning of their personal narratives in response to six different prompts tapping into different emotions. Moving beyond appraising children’s structural language skills when narrating their personal experiences may enhance understanding of interpersonal and intrapersonal aspects of theory of mind, which may inform clinical practices, such as individualized goal setting and intervention choices.

引言：学界已达成共识，分享个人叙事的核心功能在于向听者传递事件对于讲述者的意义，具体可通过运用一系列评价性手段（evaluative devices）实现。这类评价性手段的运用，可通过传递讲述者的信念、情绪、想法与欲望，反映出个体对自我与他人心理差异的认知水平。本研究旨在考察儿童在根据Global TALES实验方案中包含的6项情绪类提示语（prompts）（兴奋、担忧、恼怒、自豪、问题情境、重要事件）创作个人叙事时，对评价性手段的使用情况。本研究拟回答三个核心问题：1. 以英语为母语的10岁儿童在响应Global TALES实验方案的6项提示语时，会使用哪些类型与占比的评价性手段？男女儿童的表现是否存在差异？2. 不同类型的评价性手段之间存在何种相关性？3. 儿童对评价性手段的使用是否会因所采用的提示语类型不同而产生差异？

研究方法：本研究招募了来自3个英语国家（澳大利亚、新西兰与美国）的82名以英语为母语的10岁儿童，所有儿童均未被确诊存在语言或学习障碍。研究人员对儿童的个人叙事文本进行转录，并分析其对12类评价性手段的使用情况，分别为：强制表达（compulsion）、内部情绪状态（internal emotional states）、评价性词汇（evaluative words）、强化语（intensifiers）、心理状态（mental states）、因果解释（causal explanations）、假设推断（hypotheses）、客观判断（objective judgements）、主观判断（subjective judgements）、意图表达（intent）、否定表达（negatives）与重复表述（repetition）。

研究结果：结果显示，儿童会大量使用评价性手段，其中强化语与评价性词汇的使用频率最高。性别差异仅存在少数显著效应，具体表现为女孩使用的评价性手段类型范围比男孩更广。本研究发现，多数评价性手段之间存在中等至较强的相关性；通过因子分析提取出三个因子，我们分别将其命名为“因果性（causality）”、“假设性（hypothesis）”与“判断性（judgement）”。尽管提示语类型对评价性手段的使用存在显著的整体效应，但在逐一分析针对各提示语的响应时，并未发现明确的使用模式。

研究结论：本研究结果阐明了儿童在响应6项触及不同情绪的提示语时，如何通过使用评价性手段传递个人叙事的内涵。相较于仅评估儿童在叙述个人经历时的结构化语言能力，拓展研究视角将有助于深化对心理理论（theory of mind）的人际与内省维度的理解，从而为个性化目标设定、干预方案选择等临床实践提供参考依据。