I'm not necessarily drawing a direct parallel here, but this example of teaching programming through the concrete example of telling a story reminded me of this paper[1], in which the authors show that teaching math through abstract concepts leads to better understanding of material than teaching through several concrete examples in undergraduate students.

[1]: Kaminski et al., "The Advantage of Abstract Examples in Learning Math", 2008 — http://www.physics.emory.edu/~weeks/journal/454.pdf