Abstract
Bohn, A., & Berntsen, D. (2008). Life story development in childhood: The development of life story abilities and the acquisition of cultural life scripts from late middle childhood to adolescence. Developmental Psychology, 44, 1135–1147.
Introduction
There is empirical evidence that children are able to remember autobiographical events from quite an early age and that their ability to narrate these memories improves over the preschool and early school years (e.g., Fivush, Haden, & Adam, 1995; Peterson, 2002; Reese, 2002; van Abbema & Bauer, 2005). Better autobiographical memory predicts better future mental time travel (the ability to see oneself in the future), which is important for self-regulation. Memory for past events helps persons learn what to avoid and how to behave in the future. Memory detail for past and future events predicts social problem solving (Brown, Dorfman, Marmar, & Bryant, 2012). SLPs know a great deal about how children develop individual narratives, particularly fictional narratives. However, not much is known about children’s ability to combine narratives of individual autobiographical memories into a coherent life story. In fact, there is no empirical evidence for the existence of life stories in children, and it has been proposed that the ability to construct a coherent life story is not developed before adolescence or young adulthood (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Singer, 2004). Life stories are critical in a developing sense of self or identity and the ways one approaches life experiences. Given that children with language/learning disabilities exhibit delays and deficits in comprehension and production of single-event narratives, it is likely that they exhibit delays and deficits in autobiographical memory and development of life stories, which can influence their self-regulation.
A coherent life narrative depends on autobiographical reasoning, that is, the ability to create coherence between the remembered autobiographical events and to mold them into a meaningful story (Habermas & Bluck, 2000). Without autobiographical reasoning, a life narrative would only consist of lists of isolated autobiographical memories. Furthermore, the ability of autobiographical reasoning leads to the emergence of global coherence in the life narratives, which consists of four different types of coherence:
Temporal coherence: This is the ability to order events chronologically. Basic temporal coherence is acquired across the preschool years (Friedman, 1992). However, the ability to order autobiographical events by the seasons of the year first develops from about 9 years of age. By age 13, a majority of children have acquired this ability (Friedman & Lyon, 2005).
Causal coherence: A causally coherent life narrative is told in terms of motives and causes. Through causal coherence, reason and meaning are added to the life narrative, and it facilitates an explanation of how one has become the person one is. Causal coherence is closely interwoven with the establishing of an identity during adolescence (Erikson, 1968).
Thematic coherence: This is the ability to create overarching themes in a narrative and to establish thematic similarities between various events. Thus, to tell a thematically coherent life narrative implies the ability to see one’s life in the framework of life themes or to see different autobiographical events as typical for one’s life. Habermas and Bluck (2000) proposed that thematic coherence emerges in mid-adolescence.
Cultural coherence: This is the shared normative expectations concerning appropriate and probable life sequences. Cultural coherence is used—together with temporal coherence—to form a basic, skeletal life narrative consisting of an ordered sequence of culturally defined, major life events such as birth, school entrance, graduation, marriage, children . . . .
Study
Participants and Tasks
The study by Bohn and Berntsen (2008) addressed three major questions: At what age are children or adolescents able to write a coherent life story? At what age are cultural life scripts acquired? Is there a relationship between the acquisition of a cultural life script and the ability to compose a coherent life story? To measure the acquisition of cultural life scripts, the authors established a norm by collecting cultural life scripts from an adult group of college students.
Data were collected from 140 children in the third, fifth, sixth, and eighth grades. The sample was divided into three groups: third graders, fifth to sixth graders, and eighth graders. In three sessions of 45 min each, the following data were collected from the children over a 3-week period:
Written report of a recent autobiographical event: The children were asked to write about an event that had happened during their fall vacation, which had ended about 3 weeks before data collection took place. This ensured that participants wrote about similar recent, relatively unemotional, events happening at about the same time.
Written life story: Children were told the following: Think about what has happened in your life since you were born and up to now. You can, for example, write about the most important things in your life, or what changes have happened in your life since you were born and up to now. You can also tell about other things you have experienced. Imagine that you are writing the story of your life to someone who would like to know something about you and the things that have happened in your life.
Cultural life script: Participants were asked to imagine a newborn of their own sex and to write down the 10 most important events that they thought would happen in the newborn’s life across the life span. They were further asked to estimate how old the newborn would be when these events occurred.
Scoring
Cultural life scripts
First, the life scripts from the adult group were scored to set an adult norm. The life script events were classified according to the 35 categories established by Berntsen and Rubin (2004). Events that did not fit these categories and were mentioned 4 times or more were identified as new categories. All events mentioned 3 times or less were scored as “other.” This procedure resulted in a total of 42 event categories. Two scores were developed to measure life script normativity: a typicality score and an idiosyncrasy score. The typicality score was based on how often a life script event had been mentioned by the adult group. For example, the life script event “fall in love” received the typicality score 59, as it was mentioned by 59 of the 111 adult participants. “Other adult” events received a score of 2 and “other child” events a score of 1. Thus, the higher a participant scored on the typicality score, the more normative his or her life script is considered.
Coherence
Children’s single-event stories were scored on global coherence using a scale from 0 to 3 and adapted from Peterson and McCabe’s (1983) scale for the scoring of single autobiographical event stories with 0 = disoriented pattern (the narrative is too confused or disoriented for the listener to understand), 1 = chronological pattern (the narrative is a simple description of successive events [“and then, and then”]), 2 = chronological, interesting pattern (the narrative describes successive events in detail and interestingly; for example, use of adjectives, adverbs, and subordinate clauses), and 3 = classic pattern (the narrative builds to a highpoint, evaluatively dwells on it, then resolves it).
Because life stories are more complex and involve more than one autobiographical event memory, life story coherence was measured by the following parameters: (a) a scale rating the way in which the life story begins, (b) a scale rating the way the life story ends, (c) a scale measuring global life story coherence, and (d) number of life script events mentioned in the life story.
For the beginnings of life stories, the scores were 0 = begins sometime after birth, 1 = begins with birth, 2 = begins with birth plus own name or place of birth, and 3 = begins with birth plus name–place and date of birth.
For the ending of life stories, the scores were 0 = ends in the past, 1 = ends in the present, 2 = ends with short resume and/or outlook into the future, and 3 = ends with elaborate resume and/or outlook into the future.
For the global life story coherence, the scores were 0 = life story consists of a single episode; 1 = several episodes, loosely ordered chronologically; 2 = chronological order, episodes are tied together; and 3 = chronological, evaluative narrative.
Length of single-event stories and life stories were measured by word count. The number of life script events in life stories was scored by counting all those events mentioned by the children in their life stories that were part of the adult life script.
Results
Life stories
About 28% of third graders reported only a single isolated episode from their lives. Sixty percent of all third graders began their life story at some point after their birth, and almost three fourths of them ended their life story suddenly at some point in the past. None of the children in the third grade were able to provide his or her life stories; a substantial minority of children in the fifth and sixth grades showed an ability to narrate a series of events from their lives in some detail and to some extent organize them chronologically, and the majority of children in the eighth grade were able to provide a detailed life story with an evaluative and chronological structure as well as appropriate beginnings and endings. In the present study, none of the third graders, only about 24% of fifth and sixth graders, and almost 60% of the eighth graders finished their life stories with an evaluation of the past or an outlook into the future, and adult-like typicality of the life script was positively correlated with the degree of evaluation and future outlook in the life story.
Single-event stories
Children wrote about similar, relatively unemotional or slightly positive events from their vacations. The majority of stories concerned family vacations or outings and experiences with friends (i.e., going shopping, going to the movies, playing computer games or soccer). The two older child groups wrote significantly longer single-event stories than did the third graders. There was increasing coherence of the single-event stories from third to eighth grades.
Cultural life scripts
The number of nonadult event categories diminished with increasing age. The cultural life scripts of the children became more adult-like with increasing age. However, even in the oldest child group, the average typicality had not reached adult norm yet.
Discussion
Narrative coherence and life story coherence developed in parallel; however, this study provides evidence that something more or different is needed to produce a coherent life narrative as compared with producing a coherent narrative of a single autobiographical event. Narrative coherence alone cannot account for the emergence of the life story in adolescence. It is necessary, but not sufficient. In addition to general narrative and linguistic competence, the acquisition of a cultural life script plays an important role for the ability to coherently narrate one’s life story. The typicality of cultural life scripts increased across childhood and adolescence.
In this study, there were significant correlations between the typicality of the cultural life scripts and life story coherence, but no correlation was found between the coherence of single-event stories and the typicality of the cultural life script. This suggests that the acquisition of a cultural life script may be an important precondition for the ability to generate a personal life story. Acquiring a cultural life script is to acquire a generic life story structure on the basis of which the child’s own personal life story can be generated. The child learns to evaluate his or her personal life experiences against a normative cultural past and to plan his or her future with regard to a culturally expected future. The acquisition of a cultural life script may be closely connected to the ability to mentally project oneself into the personal future and envision potential personal events, which are important for self-regulation and planning.
Autobiographical narratives and life stories have long-term importance for self-regulation and social problem solving. Consequently, with preschool and young elementary school children, SLPs should consider activities to develop their ability to produce coherent narratives of single experiences. With upper elementary and middle-school students, SLPs can encourage students to produce a series of personal narratives (autobiographic memories) in a temporal sequence with causal relationships among the experiences/narratives. And by late middle school and high school, intervention efforts can address telling life stories with a theme. By this time, academically, students are expected to recognize and compare themes in literature and understand how the nature of the characters influence the themes.