The Development of “Deficit-Complement” Schema in a Semantic Integration of Narrative Sequences in an Abstract Drawing Story

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of “deficit-complement” schema played in a semantic integration of narrative sequences and the development of the same schema. Eighty-four 4-year-old and 5-year-old children were divided into three homogeneous groups, and assigned to one of three conditions : a non-restricted information with an undetermined deficit, a restricted information, or a non-information. The children were shown an abstract drawing story and were asked to describe each picture and perform a free-recall of the story and comprehension tasks. The results showed that the hypothesis, “the deficit information facilitating semantic integration of narrative sequences” was supported. It also showed that for the 4 year-old, influenced by the perceptual feature of each picture, in order to reconstruct interpretation the restricted infomation was difficult to utilize, while the 5 year-old could utilize the information and construct coherent interpretation. As a result, qualitative differences of cognitive basis for story production between the two age groups were shown. © 1989, The Japanese Association of Educational Psychology. All rights reserved.