Journal of Narrative and Life History - Volume 6, Issue 1, 1996

AbstractRecent research showing links between family narratives and emotional adaptation has raised questions regarding the significance of the coherence of marital narratives for couple adaptation, the important distinction between the narratives couples co-construct and the dyadic process during the co-construction, and the roles of individual psychological functioning and marital functioning in co-constructed narratives. In order to address these questions, we investigated the associations between couples' narratives about the birth of their child and their marital satisfaction and individual psychological wellbeing at the time the narrative was constructed as well as 1 and 2 years later. Results show that the emotional coherence of couples' narratives was associated with their marital satisfaction at the time the narrative was constructed as well as 1 and 2 years later, and similar results were found regarding the emotional expressiveness of the narratives. These associations remained significant when the individual psychological distress of marital partners was held constant and suggest that co-constructed marital narratives are important windows into marital relationships. (Psychology)

AbstractFamily stories of children's early experiences may be important contributors to children's growing sense of self. In this study, 35 New Zealand Pakeha (European-descent) mothers told their preschoolers the story of the child's birth. Conversations were coded for mothers' emphasis on interpersonal aspects of the birth or for an exclusive focus on the child. Overall, mothers with daughters and younger preschoolers adopted a more interpersonal focus than did mothers with sons and older preschoolers. Mothers' focus was not solely a function of the topics that children brought up during the conversations. Thus, mothers seem to view the birth narrative as a way of introducing their daughters and younger children into their space in the wider family community. (Development, Gender Socialization, Self-Concept)

AbstractContrary to traditional models of student persistence, Cambodian refugee students' survival strategies reflect and enhance the significance of reference points external to the academic and social domains of the university. Authorizing Cambodian student voices reveals the strengths and needs of their multidimensional backgrounds—particularly in relation to the curriculum and dynamics of teaching and learning in the classroom. (Cambodian Students, Southeast Asian Students, College Student Persistence, Student Voices)

AbstractIn this study, we compared storytelling of a pictured narrative, Frog, Where Are You?, by 6 Deaf and 6 hearing mothers in American Sign Language (ASL) and in English, respectively. How do these mothers construct their stories, that is, how do they mark episodes? And how do English-speakers' strategies differ from ASL-users' strategies? We found that stories in ASL contained more explicit markers to signal both local and global relations of the narrative. Because of modality and grammatical differences between English and ASL, Deaf mothers seemed to have more strategies available to use. Although the overall pattern of use throughout the story was similar, Deaf mothers appeared to be more "dramatic" in their storytelling than were hearing mothers. Both groups of parents used a variety of markers to call their children's attention to the theme of the story. (Psychology)

AbstractThe goals of this study were: (a) to test whether objective narrative variables can be reliably applied to commonly used clinical assessment tasks, (b) to assess the relative stability and differences in mean levels of narrative performance in participants' stories across assessment tasks, and (c) to assess the degree to which levels of psychopathology can be predicted by objective narrative measures. Stories were elicited from 31 substance abuse patients using 4 different narrative tasks. The 124 stories were coded using 5 measures that assess levels of structural connectedness, subjectivity, and complexity. Results, based on the reliably coded narrative measures, indicated that (a) participants displayed stable individual differences, whereas mean performance levels varied systematically across the story-elicitation tasks; and (b) a substantial amount of variance in depressive, anxious, and cognitive mediation symptoms could be predicted using these measures. Results are discussed in terms of the need to further develop objective measures of narrative performance and narrative assessment tasks. (Psychology)