Comprehension of Stories with No-Obstacle and Obstacle Endings

GOLDMAN, SUSAN R., and VARNHAGEN, CONNIE K. Comprehension of Stories with No-Obstacle and Obstacle Endings. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1983, 54, 980-992. Comprehension of stories with and without obstacles to goal attainment was examined. 16 secondand fifth-grade students and 16 adults listened to and read single-episode stories in which (1) the protagonist met the episode goal (no-obstacle ending) and (2) an external state prevented the protagonist from meeting the episode goal (obstacle ending). Several aspects of story understanding were assessed: free and cued recall for presented infonnation, additions to free recall, responses to questions requiring causal inferences, and story preference data. For the children, recall of actions taken to meet the goal (attempt information) was affected by both ending and whether they had read or listened to the stories. The inclusion of outcome information in free recall was affected by ending. Responses to causal inference questions provided strong evidence for hypothesized differences in the causal links between the attempt and successful versus unsuccessful goal attainment. These differences were attenuated in the adult data. Finally, there was a developmental trend toward increased preference for the obstacle stories. These results suggest that processing characteristics of a task as well as prior knowledge of problem-solving behavior affect story understanding.