Abstract :
This study examined differences in performance between 20 shy and 20 matched nonshy children
on a narrative task and in the way parents scaffolded their narrative performance when reading the
wordless book Frog, Where Are You, by Mercer Mayer. Consistent with previous research, results
demonstrated that shy children spoke less than their nonshy peers and volunteered less story content.
Parents, however, did not differ in how they scaffolded their children’s speech turns, nor in the amount
of semantic information they provided. Thus, these communicative differences were not accounted for
by differential adult scaffolding. Implications for encouraging more verbal behavior from shy children
and for the design of wordless storybooks are discussed.
