Analysis of narratives of Bhutanese and rural American 7-year old children: Issues of story grammar and culture

The goal of this study was to provide cross-cultural data, comparing the fictional narrative structure and content of a population of 7-year old Bhutanese children with those of 7-year olds from a rural section of Pennsylvania. The two groups produced narrative structures containing comparable story grammar and story structure levels. Differences in content were evident in story resolution, where the Bhutanese had fewer success-oriented endings than the Pennsylvania group. The Bhutanese stories contained significantly more secondary characters as well as intense empathic responses for story characters. Secondary characters also provided goal structure in the Bhutanese stories whereas the two groups produced similar narrative structure, analysis of story content was necessary to fully describe the cultural aspects of the children's stories. (Macrostructure, Story Grammar, Story Structure Level, Story Ending Level, Perspective-taking)