The social dynamics involved in recovery and return to sport following a sport-related concussion: A study of three athlete-teammate-coach triads

An athlete's connection to their team and team members is an important part of their sport experience. However, researchers currently know little about the nature of these social dynamics with respect to concussed athletes. Our study explored athletes' recovery and reintegration into the team environment following a sport-related concussion. We conducted semi-structured interviews with each member of three athlete-teammate-coach triads (N = 9). We analysed the data using thematic narrative analysis and present the results as three stories that focused on each athlete's experience. For Cassie, we found two major plot points in her story: the transition in her role (and shift in identity) from athlete to student assistant coach/team manager and, once recovered, back to an athlete on the team. For Jess, we found that the main plot in her story was “pressure”. Specifically, the interplay between internal (placed on herself) and external (perceived from teammates and coaches) pressures to return to sport. In the third and final story, the main plot point was the tensions that arose from Jaden's preferences for social support and the type of support that his teammates and coaches believed he needed during his recovery. Our results highlight the interplay between athlete's personal and social identities, feelings of pressure to return and readiness, and the challenges of providing the right amount and type of social support. This research contributes to our limited understanding of the social dynamics involved in athletes' return to sport following a concussion.     

Cognitive structures in comprehension and memory of narrative discourse

The effects of structure and content variables on memory and comprehension of prose passages were studied in two experiments. The experimental passages exemplify a class of simple narrative stories that is described by a generative grammar of plot structures. A comprehension model is proposed that assumes a hierarchical organizational framework of stories in memory, determined by the grammar, representing the abstract structural components of the plot. The quality and characteristics of subjects' memory for stories were tested on a variety of experimental tasks in which story organization was manipulated. Comprehensibility and recall were found to be a function of the amount of inherent plot structure in the story, independent of passage content. Recall probability of individual facts from passages depended on the structural centrality of the facts: Subjects tended to recall facts corresponding to high-level organizational story elements rather than lower-level details. In addition, story summarizations from memory tended to emphasize general structural characteristics rather than specific content. For successively presented stories, both structure and content manipulations influenced recall. Furthermore, repeating story structure across two passages produced facilitation in recall of the second passage, while repeating story content produced proactive interference. The implications for a model of memory for narrative discourse are discussed.     

Situating System and Giving Self Its Due: A Story-Based Counseling Model

This essay explores Michael P. Nichols' criticism of certain aspects of the family systems therapeutic model, especially his concern that it takes insufficient account of the self in the family system. Building on Nichols' argument, and noting the paradigm shift occurring among family therapists from systems to story thinking, the essay sets forth a story model of counseling having four primary postulates: (a) possibilities for change are inherent in every story told; (b) characters in stories are always more than their ascribed social roles; (c) systems or dyadic and triadic relationships are a property of stories; and (d) the self is both a constituent of stories and exists independently of them. The importance of autobiographical studies to mediate pastoral theology's theoretical interest in theological anthropology and the story model of pastoral counseling is noted but not explored in depth.     

Forgiveness as a mediator of the relationship between PTSD and hostility in survivors of childhood abuse

This paper argues that emotional inferences about characters in a text are not as specific as previously assumed (DeVega, Diaz, & Leon, 1997; DeVega, Leon, & Diaz 1996; Gernsbacher, Goldsmith, & Robertson, 1992; Gernsbacher, Hollada, & Robertson, 1998; Gernsbacher & Robertson, 1992). The emotional information inferred by readers does not differentiate between emotions that are similar, though not identical. In both Experiments 1 and 2, participants read the stories used by Gernsbacher et al. (1992). Results from Experiment 1 (off-line) show that participants judged several emotions consistent with the same story. In Experiment 2 (on-line), participants took longer to read target sentences containing emotions mismatching the stories, but there was no difference between target sentences containing different matching emotions as determined by Experiment 1. Results from Experiments 1 and 2 suggest that the emotional information readers infer from the stories is too broad to determine a specific emotion. The results are consistent with the idea that a general emotional response is evoked, which is compatible with one or more specific emotions.     

Retrospective reflexivity: The residual and subliminal repercussions of researching war

Stories of the war have been a known part of my story as granddaughter of Polish post-war migrants. Yet venturing into these stories as researcher has been troubling; I found their closeness and their raw emotion difficult to process. Significant sections of my interview schedules entailed participants recounting their own, their parents' or their grandparents' stories of war and migration, with traumatic episodes frequently intersecting into their stories. As a researcher, these traumatic narratives have had a residual quality, lasting in my subconscious long after the interviews themselves and doctorate for which they were conducted had finished.In this paper, I focus on experiences of, and reactions to listening to, analysing and writing about these traumatic cultural memories. Collins (1998: 3.35) has observed that ‘the emotions experienced, whether by the interviewer or interviewee, are as real, as important and as interesting as any other product of the interview’; my powerfully felt experiences with traumatic content have validated this sentiment. With a retrospective reflexivity I now realise that these cultural memories were not the only ‘product’ of my research, but that how they were narrated and how I dealt with them were also a significant part of the research process, and indeed stories in themselves. Here I attempt to retell how these stories impacted me as the researcher; how in the case of particularly harrowing stories, I also needed time to absorb the narratives, to comprehend the participant's experiences and their ability to narrate such stories, and to recover from the experience of listening to such accounts.     

Do storybooks with anthropomorphized animal characters promote prosocial behaviors in young children?

For millennia, adults have told children stories not only to entertain but also to impart important moral lessons to promote prosocial behaviors. Many such stories contain anthropomorphized animals because it is believed that children learn from anthropomorphic stories as effectively, if not better than, from stories with human characters, and thus are more inclined to act according to the moral lessons of the stories. Here we experimentally tested this belief by reading preschoolers a sharing story with either human characters or anthropomorphized animal characters. Reading the human story significantly increased preschoolers' altruistic giving but reading the anthropomorphic story or a control story decreased it. Thus, contrary to the common belief, realistic stories, not anthropomorphic ones, are better for promoting young children's prosocial behavior.     

Creative Writing as a Medical Instrument

Listening and responding to patients’ stories for over 20 years as an emergency physician has strengthened my appreciation for the many ways that the skills and principles drawn from writing fiction double as necessary clinical skills. The best medicine doesn’t work on the wrong story, and the stories patients tell sometimes feel like first drafts—vital and fragile works-in-progress. Increasingly complex health challenges compounded by social, financial, and psychological burdens make for stories that are difficult to articulate and comprehend. In this essay, I argue that healthcare providers need to think like creative writers and the skills and sensitivities necessary to story construction deserve a vital space in medical education. A thorough understanding of story anatomy and the imaginative flexibility to work stories into open spaces serve as antidotes to the reductive nature of clinical decision making and have implications as patient safety and risk management strategies. The examples that I have selected demonstrate how thinking like a creative writer functions at the bedside, providing tools for clinical excellence and empathy. This approach asks that we re-imagine the importance of story in clinical care: from a vehicle to a diagnosis to its place as a critical destination.     

Happiness and Suffering in the Life Story: An Inquiry into Conflicting Expectations Concerning the Association of Perceived Past with Present Subjective Well-Being in Old Age

The study examined whether positive or negative aspects of the life story were predominantly associated with present subjective well-being (SWB). Two samples (N?=?815 and 213; mean ages 75 and 73) rated past emotions (happiness and suffering) in positive and negative anchor periods (e.g., ??the happiest period,?? ??the most miserable period??) of their life stories. The indices of present SWB were present happiness, present suffering, and life satisfaction. Results indicated that when the past emotions were net of each other, past happiness was related to the positive indices, but not to the negative index, of present SWB whereas past suffering was related to the negative index, and only partially to the positive indices, of present SWB. Congruent emotions (happiness in positive periods, suffering in negative periods) were stronger than incongruent emotions (happiness in negative periods, suffering in positive periods), yet each had unique associations with present SWB. Finally, past happiness weakened the inverse relationship between past suffering and present SWB, yet it strengthened this relationship when past emotions were both incongruent (i.e., when happiness in negative periods was analyzed in conjunction with suffering in positive periods). In conclusion, rather than presenting predominance over each other, positive and negative ingredients in the life story maintain complementary and interactive associations with present SWB. In this context, the study points to the SWB-related implications of the interplay between paramount life experiences in the individual??s anchor periods and the emotions that the individual attributes to these periods.     

Effects of discrete emotions on young children's suggestibility

Two experiments investigated the effects of sadness, anger, and happiness on 4- to 6-year-old children's memory and suggestibility concerning story events. In Experiment 1, children were presented with 3 interactive stories on a video monitor. The stories included protagonists who wanted to give the child a prize. After each story, the child completed a task to try to win the prize. The outcome of the child's effort was manipulated in order to elicit sadness, anger, or happiness. Children's emotions did not affect story recall, but children were more vulnerable to misleading questions about the stories when sad than when angry or happy. In Experiment 2, a story was presented and emotions were elicited using an autobiographical recall task. Children responded to misleading questions and then recalled the story for a different interviewer. Again, children's emotions did not affect the amount of story information recalled correctly, but sad children incorporated more information from misleading questions during recall than did angry or happy children. Sad children's greater suggestibility is discussed in terms of the differing problem-solving strategies associated with discrete emotions.     

Dyad Gender Differences in Preadolescents' Creative Stories

This study extended research on gender differences in creative stories written by individuals to creative stories written in collaboration with a same- or an other-gender peer partner. Participants were 104 preadolescent sixth graders, mostly White and middle class. Same- and other-gender peer partners (18 girl, 16 boy, and 17 mixed-gender dyads) worked together for 4 weeks to write creative stories based on mystery pictures. Story ideas were coded into one of seven categories (i.e., overt aggression, verbal aggression, relational aggression, prosocial behavior, negative emotion, positive emotion, and neutral/other). Boy dyads' stories included a greater proportion of overtly aggressive story ideas and a lesser proportion of prosocial story ideas than did girl dyads' stories. Mixed-gender dyads' stories contained a greater proportion of prosocial ideas than did boy dyads' stories. Findings are discussed in light of a social-contextual approach to gender differences and similarities.     

Living,resisting, and playing the part of athlete: Narrative tensions in elite sport

ObjectivesTo explore: (i) How elite and professional sport culture might steer individuals towards particular stories, identities, and actions; (ii) How athletes navigate or respond to these cultural pressures.DesignCross-sectional qualitative methodology.MethodNarrative interviews and focus groups with 21 elite and professional athletes followed by a narrative analysis of structure and form.ResultsAthletes demonstrated one of three processes. Individuals who live the part of athlete story their life and act in ways that conform to a culturally dominant performance narrative. Here, identity is foreclosed, relationships sacrificed in the pursuit of success, and long-term wellbeing threatened. Over time, alternative narrative types may provoke moral reflection on their story and actions. Individuals who resist the part of athlete sustain a life story and identity that deviates from the performance narrative, drawing on alternative narrative types. Their resistance is typically overt as they publicly demonstrate actions that align with their multidimensional story. Individuals who play the part of athlete modify their story and actions depending on sociocultural context. These individuals covertly maintain a multidimensional life story, but silence this story when powerful others require performance stories.ConclusionsAlthough some elite/professional athletes' life stories revolve around performance outcomes, this is not a prerequisite for excellence. Other athletes achieve excellence while sustaining a multidimensional life story and identity. To do so, they navigate a culture that expects a performance focus, through overt resistance or covertly manipulating their public stories and actions.     

On fair countable lotteries

Two reverse supertasks—one new and one invented by Pérez Laraudogoitia (Philos Stud 168:619–628, 2014)—are discussed. Contra Kerkvliet (Log Anal, 2016) and Pérez Laraudogoitia, it is argued that these supertasks cannot be used to conduct fair infinite lotteries, i.e., lotteries on the set of natural numbers with a uniform probability distribution. The new supertask involves an infinity of gods who collectively select a natural number by each removing one ball from a collection of initially infinitely many balls in a reverse omega-sequence of actions.     

The Sleeping Beauty and the Therapist’s Gaze: Commentary on Hours and Mayers’s Article on Finding a Path toward Re-Enchantment

In their article, Hours and Mayers make the case that in the imaginary world of fairy tales children have an opportunity to engage and symbolize and also to reflect on the experiences and motives of imaginary characters. This was the case with 8-year-old Barbara who responded to the fairy tales that were narrated to the group by joining in and beginning to share her ideas and reactions. In this commentary, it is argued that it was not just the experience of enchantment that enabled Barbara to begin to listen more attentively to the stories and to engage with her peers. It was also her experience of the narrator's gaze, the therapist who wanted to tell a story to her to make her feel enchanted by all the images and emotions stories can evoke to anyone who listens to them.     

The Use and Evolution of Stories as a Mode of Problem Representation: Soviet and French Military Officers Face the Loss of Empire

Experimental work on modes of problem representation (Sylvan, Diascro, & Haddad, 1996) has found that the story model of Pennington and Hastie (1986, 1988) is a helpful construct in understanding how people reach decisions when dealing with questions of foreign policy. Here, a modified version of the story model is applied to statements by military officers in the Soviet Union and in France, representing the situations they face before and after the loss of Eastern Europe and Indochina, respectively (Charlick-Paley, 1997). Both baseline stories and those after the losses of empire are examined to test the hypothesis that when a military experiences the loss of its state's empire, officers will formulate a new story that justifies the change in its status, and that this new story will motivate new patterns of civil-military relations in the post-imperial era. The hypothesis finds general support, and stories are found to be a useful vehicle in understanding differences between groups of military officers. An analysis of how officers' stories change over time yields intriguing results as to how mutable stories are and which elements of a story are most likely to change first. In particular, expansion of the level of a goal is found to be a representational response to the political stimulus of loss of empire.     

The Language of Creativity: Evidence from Humans and Large Language Models

Recent developments in computerized scoring via semantic distance have provided automated assessments of verbal creativity. Here, we extend past work, applying computational linguistic approaches to characterize salient features of creative text. We hypothesize that, in addition to semantic diversity, the degree to which a story includes perceptual details, thus transporting the reader to another time and place, would be predictive of creativity. Additionally, we explore the use of generative language models to supplement human data collection and examine the extent to which machine-generated stories can mimic human creativity. We collect 600 short stories from human participants and GPT-3, subsequently randomized and assessed on their creative quality. Results indicate that the presence of perceptual details, in conjunction with semantic diversity, is highly predictive of creativity. These results were replicated in an independent sample of stories (n = 120) generated by GPT-4. We do not observe a significant difference between human and AI-generated stories in terms of creativity ratings, and we also observe positive correlations between human and AI assessments of creativity. Implications and future directions are discussed.     

Discourse-based emotional consistency modulates early and middle components of event-related potentials

In this study, participants read stories describing emotional episodes with either a positive or negative valence (Experiment 1). Following each story, participants were exposed to short sentences referring to the protagonist, and the event-related potential (ERP) for each sentence's last word was recorded. Some sentences described the protagonist's emotion, either consistent or inconsistent with the story; others were neutral; and others involved a semantically anomalous word. Inconsistent emotions were found to elicit larger N100/P200 and N400 than consistent emotions. However, when participants were exposed to the same critical sentences in a control experiment (Experiment 2) in which the stories had been removed, emotional consistency effects disappeared in all ERP components, demonstrating that these effects were discourse-level phenomena. By contrast, the ordinary N400 effect for locally anomalous words in the sentence was obtained both with and without story context. In conclusion, reading stories describing events with emotional significance determines strong and very early anticipations of an emotional word.