This paper examines the referential strategies used by Japanese children and adults in two story telling tasks focusing upon the following discourse contexts: (1) first mentions of story characters, (2) references in subject position to the same character, and (3) references to another character. The subjects, 60 children and 10 adults, were interviewed and asked to tell the story of a set of cartoons and a 7-minute color videotape. The children differentiated the three discourse contexts, although not as strongly as the adults. Both children and adults used nominal reference for first mentions of story characters. Developmental trends showed up especially in the contexts calling for explicit nominal reference, first mentions, and switch subjects. In the children's narratives, a less frequent use of nominal first references was found in the three younger groups. Examination of the data leads to the conclusion that differences in children's referential choices can be understood by considering the nature of the context and the child's relationship to the referent in each case. It would seem that their referential choices are based on their own relationship to the referent, that they ignore the listener's needs, and that they master the skill of introducing referents recalled from memory during their fourth year. (AMH)