When all children comprehend: increasing the external validity of narrative comprehension development research

Silas E. Burris, Danielle D. Brown

Narratives, also called stories, can be found in conversations, children's play interactions, reading material, and television programs. From infancy to adulthood, narrative comprehension processes interpret events and inform our understanding of physical and social environments. These processes have been extensively studied to ascertain the multifaceted nature of narrative comprehension. From this research we know that three overlapping processes (i.e., knowledge integration, goal structure understanding, and causal inference generation) proposed by the constructionist paradigm are necessary for narrative comprehension, narrative comprehension has a predictive relationship with children's later reading performance, and comprehension processes are generalizable to other contexts. Much of the previous research has emphasized internal and predictive validity; thus, limiting the generalizability of previous findings. We are concerned these limitations may be excluding underrepresented populations from benefits and implications identified by early comprehension processes research. This review identifies gaps in extant literature regarding external validity and argues for increased emphasis on externally valid research. We highlight limited research on narrative comprehension processes in children from low-income and minority populations, and argue for changes in comprehension assessments. Specifically, we argue both on- and off-line assessments should be used across various narrative types (e.g., picture books, televised narratives) with traditionally underserved and underrepresented populations. We propose increasing the generalizability of narrative comprehension processes research can inform persistent reading achievement gaps, and have practical implications for how children learn from narratives.