Representing and analyzing temporal complexity in children's story books

Abstract

In this thesis, the temporal complexity in children's stories is analyzed to better understand the development of children's perception of time. The temporal complexity increases both in greater deviations from a chronological presentation of events, as well as an increase in the different kinds of temporal relations between events. Tools to analyze and display the temporal complexity were developed and are used to demonstrate an increase in temporal complexity as the grade level increases. The results from this were then used to determine the appropriate reading material for a given grade of sample stories. Unlike the normal assessments methods, that use only the word and sentence complexity, this thesis takes into account both the the semantic contents of the story and the cognitive ability of the child.