Education, Not Age, Linked to Narrative Comprehension

Background: Understanding narratives is essential for societal participation. However, insufficient literacy or age-related cognitive changes can limit narrative comprehension and create participation barriers. Aims: This study investigates the potential of pictorial narratives to convey information beyond text and break down barriers to comprehension.Sample: A representative adult sample (N = 1487). Methods: The experimental study assessed the influences of age and education on the comprehension of textual and pictorial narratives. Participants were tested on the generation of bridging inferences, a central aspect of narrative comprehension. The narratives used were based on the "Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives" (MAIN), and comprehension was measured through a task where participants identified correct and false inference statements related to missing parts of the narratives. Results: Narrative comprehension was higher within higher educated groups and stable across the measured adult age span. Comprehension was generally better for pictorial narratives than textual ones across all education and age groups. Frequentist and Bayesian analyses supported these findings, showing significant effects of education and narrative modality on comprehension but no interaction between these factors. Conclusions: The findings lay the groundwork for more effectively addressing underprivileged groups and refining theories on narrative comprehension. The results suggest that pictorial narratives could be a valuable approach to enhance comprehension and participation for individuals with literacy challenges or cognitive changes due to aging. This study also emphasizes the role of education in narrative comprehension and suggests stable comprehension abilities across the adult age span.